Podcasts about Andrew Keen

So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Is America screwed? Not according to the former managing editor of Wired, Peter Leyden. The creator of the Substack newsletter The Great Progression, Leyden believes that U.S. history operates in 80 year cycles and that America, empowered by Northern Californian technology, is gearing up for another remarkable period of innovation. Leyden is no MAGA fanboy, but argues that Trump is enabling the American future by destroying the Republican brand and unintentionally guaranteeing a longterm Democratic majority. It's a provocative thesis which I hope is true. But what about China? And can we really trust Silicon Valley's tech titans to make America great again? 5 Takeaways* Leyden believes America cycles through major reinventions approximately every 80 years, with previous transformations occurring after the Constitutional Convention, Civil War, and World War II.* He argues that post-WWII systems (welfare state, Pax Americana) are outdated and that Trump's presidency is accelerating their necessary dismantling.* Leyden sees an opportunity for progressives to rebuild American systems using AI, clean energy and bioengineering in more efficient, effective ways.* Leyden references economic historian Carlota Perez's theory that technological revolutions move from "Gilded Ages" (concentrated wealth/power) to "Golden Ages" (distributed benefits) through democratic intervention.* Leyden positions the US-China competition, particularly in AI development, as a fundamental contest between democratic and authoritarian approaches to organizing society with new technologies.Peter Leyden is a tech expert and thought leader on artificial intelligence, climate technologies and a more positive future through his keynote speaking, writing and advising. Leyden currently is the creator of The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050, which is a series of keynote talks, Substack essays, and his next book on our new potential to harness AI and other transformative technologies to create a much better world. He also is the founder of Reinvent Futures, advising senior leaders in strategic foresight and the impacts of these new technologies. Since coming to San Francisco to work with the founders of WIRED to start​​ The Digital Age, he has followed the front edge of technological change and built an extraordinary network of pioneering innovators in Silicon Valley. Leyden most recently convened this network of elite tech experts through the first two years of the Generative AI Revolution as host and curator of one of the premier event series at ground zero in San Francisco — The AI Age Begins. Leyden is the former Managing Editor of WIRED, who then became the Founder and CEO of two startups that pioneered the early video mediums of first YouTube and then Zoom. He wrote two influential books on the future that went into multiple languages, including The Long Boom that foretold how the new digital economy would scale over 25 years — and largely did. Leyden began his career as a journalist covering America, then did a stint as a foreign correspondent in Asia for Newsweek, including covering the early rise of China. He has traveled to more than 50 countries around the world. He was raised in the heartland in Minnesota, graduated summa cum laude at Georgetown University, and earned two masters degrees from Columbia University.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In yesterday's show, the neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod explained how radical ideology is infecting our brains. Today, Unite America executive director Nick Troiano explains how the American democratic system is empowering radicals in both parties. In The Primary Solution, Troiano argues that party primaries give disproportionate influence to political extremes, with 90% of elections being decided in primaries where few people participate. Troiano advocates for open primaries that allow all voters to participate regardless of party affiliation, citing Alaska's reform which combine open primaries with ranked-choice voting as a model solution. FIVE TAKEAWAYS* The primary election system in America gives disproportionate influence to political fringes, as 90% of elections are effectively decided in primaries where few people participate.* In 16 states, independent voters (about 16 million Americans) are locked out of taxpayer-funded primaries, meaning they cannot participate in elections that often determine the final outcome.* Five states (Nebraska, Louisiana, California, Washington, and Alaska) have already abolished party primaries for state or federal elections, implementing various alternative systems.* Troiano advocates for the Alaska model, which combines an open all-candidate primary with instant runoff elections, allowing all voters to participate regardless of party affiliation.* Structural reform at the state level is more achievable than national reform, as the Constitution allows states to set the "time, place, and manner" of their elections without requiring constitutional amendments.Nick Troiano is the founding executive director of Unite America, a philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government. Since 2019, Unite America has invested over $50 million to help win three major statewide ballot initiatives and over a dozen state legislative and municipal policy victories. In 2014, Troiano ran for the US House of Representatives in Pennsylvania's 10th District and was both the youngest candidate of the cycle and the most competitive independent Congressional candidate nationally in over two decades. Nick earned both his BA and MA in American government from Georgetown University and, as an undergraduate, cofounded an endowed Social Innovation and Public Service Fund. He regularly provides commentary to a range of media outlets on topics of democracy and politics, and he has been featured in three documentaries: Follow the Leader, Broken Eggs, and Unrepresented. He lives in Denver, Colorado.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Few Americans have been as explicit in their warnings about Donald Trump than the St. Louis based writer Sarah Kendzior. Her latest book, The Last American Road Trip, is a memoir chronicling Kendzior's journey down Route 66 to show her children America before it is destroyed. Borrowing from her research of post Soviet Central Asia, Kendzior argues that Trump is establishing a kleptocratic “mafia state” designed to fleece the country of its valuables. This is the third time that Kendzior has been on the show and I have to admit I've always been slightly skeptical of her apocalyptic take on Trump. But given the damage that the new administration is inflicting on America, I have to admit that many of Kendzior's warnings now appear to be uncannily prescient. As she warns, it's Springtime in America. And things are about to get much much hotter. FIVE TAKEAWAYS* Kendzior views Trump's administration as a "mafia state" or kleptocracy focused on stripping America for parts rather than traditional fascism, comparing it to post-Soviet oligarchic systems she studied as an academic.* She believes American institutions have failed to prevent authoritarianism, criticizing both the Biden administration and other institutional leaders for not taking sufficient preventative action during Trump's first term.* Despite her bleak analysis, Kendzior finds hope in ordinary Americans and their capacity for mutual care and resistance, even as she sees formal leadership failing.* Kendzior's new book The Last American Road Trip follows her journey to show her children America before potential collapse, using Route 66 as a lens to examine American decay and resilience.* As an independent voice, she describes being targeted through both publishing obstacles and personal threats, yet remains committed to staying in her community and documenting what's happening. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, it is April the 18th, 2025, a Friday. I'm thrilled today that we have one of my favorite guests back on the show. I call her the Cassandra of St. Louis, Sarah Kendzior. Many of you know her from her first book, which was a huge success. All her books have done very well. The View from Flyover Country. She was warning us about Trump and Trumpism and MAGA. She was first on our show in 2020. Talking about media in the age of Trump. She had another book out then, Hiding in Plain Sight, The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America. Then in 2022, she came back on the show to talk about how a culture of conspiracy is keeping America simultaneously complacent and paranoid that the book was called or is called, They Knew. Another big success. And now Sarah has a new book out. It's called The Last American Road Trip. It's a beautifully written book, a kind of memoir, but a political one, of course, which one would expect from Sarah Kendzior. And I'm thrilled, as I said, that the Cassandra of St. Louis is joining us from St. Louis. Sarah, congratulations on the new book.Sarah Kendzior: Oh, thank you. And thank you for having me back on.Andrew Keen: Well, it's an honor. So these four books, how does the last American road trip in terms of the narrative of your previous three hits, how does it fit in? Why did you write it?Sarah Kendzior: Well, this book kind of pivots off the epilog of hiding in plain sight. And that was a book about political corruption in the United States and the rise of Trump. But in the epilogue, I describe how I was trying as a mom to show my kids America in the case that it ended due to both political turmoil and corruption and also climate change. I wanted them to see things themselves. So I was driving them around the country to national parks, historic sites, et cetera. And so many people responded so passionately to that little section, especially parents really struggling on how to raise children in this America that I ended up writing a book that covers 2016 to 2024 and my attempts to show my children everything I could in the time that we had. And as this happens, my children went from relatively young kids to teenagers, my daughter's almost an adult. And so it kind of captures America during this time period. It's also just a travelog, a road trip book, a memoir. It's a lot of things at once.Andrew Keen: Yeah, got great review from Ms. magazine comparing you with the great road writers, Kerouac, of course, and Steinbeck, but Kerouak and Steinback, certainly Kerouack was very much of a solitary male. Is there a female quality to this book? As you say, it's a book as much about your kids and the promise of America as it is about yourself.Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, I think there is in that, you know, I have a section actually about the doomed female road trip where it's, you know, Thelma and Louise or Janet Bates and Psycho or even songs about, you know, being on the road and on the run that are written by women, you know, like Merle Haggard's I'm a Lonesome Fugitive, had to be sung by men to convey that quality. And there aren't a lot of, you know, mom on the Road with her husband and kids kind of books. That said, I think of it as a family book, a parenting book. I certainly think men would like it just as much as women would, and people without kids would like just as people with kids, although it does seem to strike a special resonance with families struggling with a lot of the same issues that I do.Andrew Keen: It's all about the allure of historic Route 66. I've been on that. Anyone who's driven across the country has you. You explain that it's a compilation of four long trips across Route 66 in 1998, 2007, 2017, and 2023. That's almost 40 years, Sarah. Sorry, 30. Getting away my age there, Andrew. My math isn't very good. I mean, how has Route 66 and of course, America changed in that period? I know that's a rather leading question.Sarah Kendzior: No, I mean, I devote quite a lot of the book to Route 66 in part because I live on it, you know, goes right through St. Louis. So, I see it just every day. I'll be casually grocery shopping and then be informed I'm on historic Route 66 all of a sudden. But you know it's a road that is, you once was the great kind of romanticized road of escape and travel. It was decommissioned notably by Ronald Reagan after the creation of the interstate. And now it's just a series of rural roads, frontage roads, roads that end abruptly, roads that have gone into ruin, roads that are in some really beautiful places in terms of the landscape. So it really is this conglomeration of all of America, you know of the decay and the destruction and the abandonment in particular, but also people's, their own memories, their own artistic works, you know roadside shrines and creations that are often, you know pretty off beat. That they've put to show this is what I think of our country. These are my values. This is what, I think, is important. So it's a very interesting journey to take. It's often one I'm kind of inadvertently on just because of where I live and the direction I go. We'll mirror it. So I kept passing these sites again and again. I didn't set out to write this book. Obviously, when I first drove it when I was 19, I didn't know that this was our future. But looking back, especially at technological change, at how we travel, at how trust each other, at all of these things that have happened to this country since this time, it's really something. And that road will bring back all of those memories of what was lost and what remains to be lost. And of course it's hitting its 100th anniversary next year, so I'm guessing there'll be a lot of reminiscing about Route 66.Andrew Keen: Book about memories, you write about that, eventually even your memory will just or this experience of this trip will just be a memory. What does that suggest about contextualizing the current moment in American history? It's too easy to overdramatize it or perhaps it's hard not to over dramatize it given what's happening. I want to talk about a little bit about that your take on America on April the 18th, 2025. But how does that make sense of a memorial when you know that even your memories will become memories?Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, I mean it's hard to talk frankly about what's happening in America now without it sounding over dramatic or hyperbolic, which I think is why so many people were reluctant to believe me over my last decade of warnings that the current crises and catastrophes that we're experiencing are coming, are possible, and need to be actively stopped. I don't think they were inevitable, but they needed to be stopped by people in charge who refused to do it. And so, my reaction to this as a writer, but just as a human being is to write everything down, is to keep an ongoing record, not only of what I witness now, but of what know of our history, of what my own values are, of what place in the world is. And back in 2016, I encouraged everyone to do this because I knew that over the next decade, people would be told to accept things that they would normally never accept, to believe things that they would normally, never believe. And if you write down where you stand, you always have that point of reference to look back towards. It doesn't have to be for publication. It doesn't have to for the outside world. It can just be for yourself. And so I think that that's important. But right now, I think everyone has a role to play in battling what is an authoritarian kleptocracy and preventing it from hurting people. And I think people should lean into what they do best. And what I do best is write and research and document. So that's what I meant. Continue to do, particularly as history itself is under assault by this government.Andrew Keen: One of the things that strikes me about you, Sarah, is that you have an unusual background. You got a PhD in Soviet studies, late Soviet studies.Sarah Kendzior: Anthropology, yeah, but that was nice.Andrew Keen: But your dissertation was on the Uzbek opposition in exile. I wonder whether that experience of studying the late Soviet Union and its disintegration equipped you in some ways better than a lot of domestic American political analysts and writers for what's happening in America today. We've done a number of shows with people like Pete Weiner, who I'm sure you know his work from the Atlantic of New York Times. About learning from East European resistance writers, brave people like Milan Kundra, of course, Vaclav Havel, Solzhenitsyn. Do you think your earlier history of studying the Soviet Union helped you prepare, at least mentally, intellectually, for what's happening in the United States?Sarah Kendzior: Oh, absolutely. I think it was essential, because there are all sorts of different types of authoritarianism. And the type that Trump and his backers have always pursued was that of a mafia state, you know, of a kleptocracy. And Uzbekistan is the country that I knew the most. And actually, you what I wrote my dissertation about, this is between 2006, and 2012, was the fact that after a massacre of civilians... A lot of Uzbekistan's journalists, activists, political figures, opposition figures, et cetera, went into exile and then they immediately started writing blogs. And so for the very first time, they had freedom of speech. They had never had it in Uzbekistan. And they start revealing the whole secret history of Uzbekistan and everything going on and trying to work with each other, try to sort of have some impact on the political process in Uzbekistan. And they lost. What happened was the dictator died, Islam Karimov died, in 2016, and was replaced by another dictator who's not quite as severe. But watching the losing side and also watching people persevere and hold on to themselves and continue working despite that loss, I think, was very influential. Because you could look at Václav Havel or Lech Walesa or, you know, other sort of. People who won, you know, from Eastern Europe, from the revolutions of 1989 and so forth. And it's inspiring that sometimes I think it's really important to look at the people who did not succeed, but kept going anyway. You know, they didn't surrender themselves. They didn't their morality and they didn't abandon their fellow man. And I think that that's important. And also just to sort of get at the heart of your question, yes, you the structure of it, oligarchs who shake down countries, strip them and sell them for parts. Mine them for resources. That model, especially of what happened to Russia, actually, in particular in the 1990s of these oligarch wars, is what I see as the future of the United States right now. That is what they're trying to emulate.Andrew Keen: That we did a show with Steve Hansen and Jeff Kopstein, both political scientists, on what they see. They co-wrote a book on patrimonialism. This is the model they see there. They're both Max Weber scholars, so they borrow from that historic sociological analysis. And Kopstein was on the show with John Rausch as well, talking about this patrimonials. And so you, do you share the Kopstein-Hansen-Rausch analysis. Roush wrote a piece in the Atlantic about this too, which did very well. But this isn't conventional fascism or communism. It's a kind of 21st century version of patrimonialism.Sarah Kendzior: It's definitely not traditional fascism and one of the main reasons for that is a fascist has loyalty to the state. They seek to embody the state, they seek to expand the state recently Trump has been doing this more traditional route somewhat things like wanting to buy Greenland. But I think a lot of what he's doing is in reaction to climate change and also by the way I don't think Trump is the mastermind or originator. Of any of these geopolitical designs. You know, he has a team, we know about some of them with the Heritage Foundation Project 2025. We know he has foreign advisors. And again, you know, Trump is a corporate raider. That is how he led his business life. He's a mafia associate who wants to strip things down and sell them for parts. And that's what they wanna do with the United States. And that, yes, there are fascist tactics. There are fascists rhetoric. You know there are a lot of things that this country will, unfortunately, and has. In common, you know, with, say, Nazi Germany, although it's also notable that of course Nazi Germany borrowed from a lot of the tactics of Jim Crow, slavery, genocide of Native Americans. You know, this has always been a back and forth and America always has had some form of selective autocracy. But yeah, I think the folks who try to make this direct line and make it seem like the 20th century is just simply being revived, I've always felt like they were off because. There's no interest for these plutocrats in the United States even existing as a sovereign body. Like it truly doesn't matter to them if all of our institutions, even something as benign as the Postal Service, collapse. That's actually beneficial for them because then they can privatize, they can mine resources, they can make money for themselves. And I really worry that their goal is partition, you know, is to take this country. And to split it into smaller pieces that are easier to control. And that's one of the reasons I wrote this book, that I wrote The Last American Road Trip because I don't want people to fall for traps about generalizations or stereotypes about different regions of this country. I want them to see it as a whole and that our struggles are interconnected and we have a better chance of winning if we stand by each other.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and your book, in particular, The View from Flyover Country was so important because it wasn't written from San Francisco or Los Angeles or D.C. Or New York. It was written from St. Louis. So in a way, Sarah, you're presenting Trump as the ultimate Hayekian b*****d. There's a new book out by Quinn Slobodian called Hayek's B******s, which connects. Trumpianism and mago with Neoliberalism you don't see a break. We've done a lot of shows on the rise and fall of neoliberalism. You don't say a break between Hayek and TrumpSarah Kendzior: I think that in terms of neoliberalism, I think it's a continuation of it. And people who think that our crises began with Trump becoming the president in 2017, entering office, are deluded because the pathway to Trump even being able to run for president given that he was first investigated by the Department of Justice in 1973 and then was linked to a number of criminal enterprises for decades after. You know, that he was able to get in that position, you know that already showed that we had collapsed in certain respects. And so I think that these are tied together. You know, this has a lot to do with greed, with a, you know a disregard for sovereignty, a disregard human rights. For all of this Trump has always served much better as a demagogue, a front man, a figurehead. I do think, you he's a lot smarter. Than many of his opponents give him credit for. He is very good at doing what he needs to do and knowing what he need to know and nothing more. The rest he gives to the bureaucrats, to the lawyers, et cetera. But he fills this persona, and I do wonder what will happen when he is gone because they've tried very hard to find a successor and it's always failed, like DeSantis or Nikki Haley or whoever. And I kind of wonder if one of the reasons things are moving so, so fast now is they're trying to get a lot of things in under the wire while he's still alive, because I don't think that there's any individual who people have the loyalty to. His cult is not that big. It's a relatively small segment of the country, but it is very intense and very loyal to him. I don't think that loyalty is transferable.Andrew Keen: Is there anything, you know, I presented you as the Cassandra from St. Louis, you've seen the future probably clearer than most other people. Certainly when I first came across your work, I wasn't particularly convinced. I'm much more convinced now. You were right. I was wrong. Is there, anything about Trump too, that surprised you? I mean, any of the, the cruelty? Open corruption, the anger, the hostility, the attempt to destroy anything of any value in America, the fact that they seem to take such great pleasure in destroying this country's most valuable thing.Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, it's extremely sad and no, he doesn't surprise me at all. He's been the same guy since I was a little kid. You know, he was a plot line on children's television shows in the 1980s where as a child, I was supposed to know that the name Trump was synonymous with corruption, with being a tax cheat, with being a liar, you know, these were just sort of cultural codes that I was expected to know. What surprised me more is that no one stopped him because this threat was incredibly obvious. And that so many people in power have joined in, and I'm assuming they're joining in because they would rather be on the side with all that power than be a target of that power, but that they feel apparently no sense of loss, no sense grief for things like the loss of national parks, public education, the postal service, things that most folks like, social security for your elderly parents. Most Americans... Want these things. And most Americans, regardless of political party, don't want to see our country torn apart in this fashion. And so I'm not surprised by Trump. I'm surprised at the extent of his enablers at the complicity of the press and of the FBI and other institutions. And, you know, it's also been very jarring to watch how open they are this time around, you know, things like Elon Musk and his operation taking out. Classified information. The thing is, is I'm pretty sure Trump did all that. I mean, we know Trump did this in his first term, you know, and they would emphasize things like this box of physical written documents in Mar-a-Lago illegally taken. But, you know my mind always just went to, well, what did they do digitally? Because that seems much easier and much more obvious. What did they with all of these state secrets that they had access to for four years? What kind of leverage would that give them? And I think now they're just kind of, they're not bothering to hide anything anymore. I think they set the stage and now, you know, we're in the midst of the most horrible play, the most terrible performance ever. And it's, you can be still crushing at times.Andrew Keen: And of course, the real question is whether we're in the last act. Your book, The Last American Road Trip, was written, mostly written, what, in 2024 from?Sarah Kendzior: 2023.Andrew Keen: 2023. So, I mean, here's, I don't know if you can answer this, Sarah, but you know as much about middle America and middle Americans as anyone. You're on the road, you talk to everyone, you have a huge following, both on the left and the right in some ways. Some of your books now, you told me before we went live, some of your previous books, like Hiding in Plain Sight, suddenly become a big hit amongst conservative Americans. What does Trump or the MAGA people around him, what do they have to do to lose the support of ordinary Americans? As you say, they're destroying the essential infrastructure, medical, educational, the roads, the railways, everything is being destroyed, carted off almost like Stalin carted of half of the Soviet Union back into Asia during the Second World War. What does he have to do to lose the support of Middle America?Sarah Kendzior: I mean, I don't think middle America, you know, by which like a giant swath of the country that's, that's just ideological, diverse, demographically diverse supports him. I mean some do certainly. He's got some hardcore acolytes. I think most people are disillusioned with the entire political system. They are deeply frustrated by Trump. They were deeply frustrated. By Biden, they're struggling to pay bills. They're struggling. To hold on to basic human rights. And they're mad that their leverage is gone. People voted in record numbers in 2020. They protested in record number throughout Trump's first term. They've made their concerns known for a very long time and there are just very few officials really listening or responding. And I think that initially when Trump reentered the picture, it caused folks to just check out mentally because it was too overwhelming. I think it's why voter turnout was lower because the Democrats, when they won, didn't make good on their promises. It's a very simple thing. If you follow through with your campaign platform that was popular, then you're going to retain those voters. If you don't, you may lose them, especially when you're up against a very effective demagogue who has a way with rhetoric. And so we're just in such a bad place, such a painful place. I don't think people will look to politicians to solve their problems and with very good reason. I'm hoping that there are more of a sense of community support, more of sense that we're all in this together, especially as financially things begin to fall apart. Trump said openly in 2014 that he intended to crash the American economy. He said this on a Fox News clip that I found in 2016. Because it was being reprinted all over Russian-language media. They loved this clip because it also praised Putin and so forth. And I was astounded by it. I was like, why in the world isn't this all over every TV station, every radio station? He's laying out the whole plan, and now he's following that plan. And so I'm very concerned about that. And I just hope people in times like this, traditionally, this opens the door to fascism. People become extremely afraid. And in their fear they want a scapegoat, they are full of rage, they take it out on each other. That is the worst possible move right now from both a moral or a strategic view. People need to protect each other, to respect each other as fully human, to recognize almost everyone here, except for a little tiny group of corrupt billionaires, is a victim in this scenario, and so I don't see a big difference between, you know, myself and... Wherever I go. I was in Tulsa yesterday, I was in San Francisco last week. We're all in this together and I see a lot of heartache wherever I go. And so if people can lend each other support, that is the best way to get through this.Andrew Keen: Are you suggesting then that he is the Manchurian candidate? Why did he say that in 2014?Sarah Kendzior: Well, it was interesting. He was on Fox during the Sochi Olympics, and he was talking about how he speaks with Putin every day, their pals, and that Putin is going to produce a really big win for us, and we're all going to be very happy about it. And then he went on to say that the crashing of the economy and riots throughout America is what will make America great again. And this is in February 2014. Fox has deleted the clip, You know, other people have copies. So it is, it's also in my book hiding in plain sight, the transcript of that. I'm not sure, like a Manchurian candidate almost feels, you know like the person would have to be blackmailed or coerced or brainwashed somehow to participate. I think Trump is a true volunteer and his loyalty isn't to Russia per se. You know, his loyalty is to his bank accounts, like his loyalty is to power. And one thing he's been after his whole life was immunity from prosecution because he has been involved or adjacent to such an enormous number of crimes. And then when the Supreme Court granted him that, he got what he wanted and he's not afraid of breaking the law in any way. He's doing what all autocrats do, which is rewrite the law so that he is no longer breaking it. And he has a team of lawyers who help him in that agenda. So I feel like on one sense, he's very. All-American. It's kind of a sad thing that as he destroys America, he's doing it in a very American way. He plays a lot of great American music at his rallies. He has a vernacular that I can relate to that and understand it while detesting everything he's doing and all of his horrific policies. But what they want to turn us into though, I think is something that all Americans just won't. Recognized. And we've had the slipping away of a kind of unified American culture for a while, I think because we've lost our pop culture, which is really where a lot of people would bond, you know, movies, music, all of it became split into streaming services, you know. All of it became bifurcated. People stopped seeing each other as much face to face, you know, during COVID and then that became kind of a permanent thing. We're very fragmented and that hurts us badly. And all we've kind of got left is I guess sports and then politics. So people take all the effort that they used to put into devouring American pop culture or American civic life and they put it into this kind of politics that the media presents as if it's a game, like initially a horse race during the election and now like, ooh, will the evil dictator win? It's like, this is our lives. Like we have a lot on the line. So I wish they would do, they would take their job more seriously too. Of course, they're up paywalled and on streaming sites, so who's watching anyway, but still it is a problem.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's interesting you talk about this death wish, you mentioned Thelma and Louise earlier, one of the great movies, American road movies, maybe in an odd way, the final scene of the Trump movie will be similar to the, you seem to be suggesting to, I'm not gonna give away the end of Thelmer and Louise to anyone who's watching who hasn't seen it, you do need to see it, similar ending to that movie. What about, you've talked about resistance, Sarah, a one of. The most influential, I guess, resistors to Trump and Trumpism. You put up an X earlier this month about the duty of journalism to resist, the duty to thinkers to resist. Some people are leaving, guys like Tim Snyder, his wife, Marcy Shaw, Jason Stanley, another expert on fascism. You've made it clear that you're staying. What's your take on people like Snyder who are leaving this country?Sarah Kendzior: Well, from what I know, he made a statement saying he had decided to move to Canada before Trump was put in office. Jason Stanley, on the other hand, explicitly said he's moving there because Trump is in office, and my first thought when I heard about all of them was, well, what about their students? Like, what about all these students who are being targeted by ICE, who are being deported? What about their TAs? What about everyone who's in a more vulnerable position. You know, when you have a position of power and influence, you could potentially do a lot of good in helping people. You know I respect everyone's decision to live wherever they want. Like it's not my business. But I do think that if you have that kind of chance to do something powerful for the community around you, especially the most vulnerable people in it who at this time are green card holders, people here on visas, we're watching this horrific crackdown at all these universities. My natural inclination would be to stay and take a stand and not abandon them. And I guess, you know, people, they do things in different ways or they may have their own personal concerns and, you know that's fine. I just know, you know I'm not leaving, you know, like I've got elderly parents and in-laws. I've got relatives who need me. I have a lot of people who depend on me and they depend on me in St. Louis and in Missouri. Because there aren't that many journalists in St. Louis. I think there could be, there are a lot of great writers in St Louis, you know, who have given a chance, given a platform, you could really show you what it's actually like here instead of all these stereotypes. But we're always, always marginalized. Like even I'm marginalized and I think I'm, you know, probably the most well-known in terms of being a political commentator. And so I feel like it's important to stand my ground but also You know, I love this, this state in the city and I love my community and I can't fathom, you know, leaving people in the lurch at a time like this. When I'm doing better, I'm on more solid ground despite being a target of various, you know organizations and individuals. I'm at a more solid down than somebody who's a, you know a black American or an immigrant or impoverished. Like I feel like it is my job to stand up for you know, folks here and let everyone know, you know what's going on and be somebody who they can come to and feel like that's safe.Andrew Keen: You describe yourself, Sarah, as a target. Your books have done very well. Most of them have been bestsellers. I'm sure the last American road trip will do very well, you're just off.Sarah Kendzior: It is the bestseller as of yesterday. It is your bestseller, congratulations. Yeah, our USA Today bestsellers, so yeah.Andrew Keen: Excellent. So that's good news. You've been on the road, you've had hundreds of people show up. I know you wrote about signing 600 books at Left Bank Books, which is remarkable. Most writers would cut off both hands for that. How are you being targeted? You noted that some of your books are being taken off the shelves. Are they being banned or discouraged?Sarah Kendzior: I mean, basically, what's been happening is kind of akin to what you see with universities. I just think it's not as well publicized or publicized at all, where there's not some sort of, you know, like the places will give in to what they think this administration wants before they are outright told to do it. So yes, there is an attempt to remove hiding in plain sight from circulation in 2024 to, you know, make the paperback, which at the time was ranked on Amazon. At number 2,000. It was extremely popular because this is the week that the Supreme Court gave Trump immunity. I was on vacation when I found out it was being pulled out of circulation. And I was in rural New Mexico and I had to get to a place with Wi-Fi to try to fight back for my book, which was a bestseller, a recent publication. It was very strange to me and I won that fight. They put it back, but a lot of people had tried to order it at that time and didn't get it. And a lot of people try to get my other books and they just can't get them. You know, so the publisher always has a warehouse issue or a shipping problem and you know, this kind of comes up or you know people notice, they've noticed this since 2020, you know I don't get reviewed in the normal kind of place as a person that has best selling books one after another would get reviewed. You know, that kind of thing is more of a pain. I always was able to circumvent it before through social media. But since Musk took over Twitter and because of the way algorithms work, it's more and more difficult for me to manage all of the publicity and PR and whatnot on my own. And so, you know, I'm grateful that you're having me on your show. I'm also grateful that, you Know, Flatiron did give me a book tour. That's helped tremendously. But there's that. And then there's also just the constant. Death threats and threats of you know other things you know things happening to people I love and it's been scary and I get used to it and that I expect it but you know you never could really get used to people constantly telling you that they're gonna kill you you know.Andrew Keen: When you get death threats, do you go to the authorities, have they responded?Sarah Kendzior: No, there's no point. I mean, I have before and it was completely pointless. And, you know, I'll just mostly just go to people I know who I trust to see if they can check in on things. I have to be very vague here who are not in the government or in the police or anything like that. I don't think anyone would protect me. I really just don't think anyone could help. You know, one thing is, you know, yes, I'm a prominent critic of Trump and his administration, but I was also a prominent critic of. The DOJ and Merrick Garland for not doing anything about all of these threats and also a critic of Biden and the Democrats for not impeaching quickly, for not being more proactive, for not acting with greater urgency. So I'm targeted by kind of everyone except for people who don't have any power, which is a strange situation to be in because I love my readers and I think that they're wonderful and I'm incredibly grateful for them because my books largely spread through word of mouth. It is scary for me, just as like a mom in Missouri without a lot of resources to be targeted by all of these kind of high profile, wealthy, powerful people. But all I have is my voice and my writing. And so I just do what I can. And that's just the way the cards have been dealt for me and it is what it is, so.Andrew Keen: Later historians write about this period in 50 or 100 years time. How do you think you mentioned the Biden administration, you were critical of them. We haven't talked about Kamala Harris's failed presidential term, which I wasn't particularly impressed with. How much moral responsibility do you think that Biden and Harris should be accused of for Trump too?Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I'd be delighted if we have historians in the future. Well, I will be, even if I don't.Andrew Keen: Well, there will be, even if, I don't know, in America, there'll be somewhere.Sarah Kendzior: I is where it'll be some sort of AI creation that just, you know, belches out, make America great again, like, you know, like in The Shining or something, just over and over and over again. But assuming we have real historians that actually assess the situation, I think they are going to be tremendously critical of the Biden administration. I think it may in fact go down as one of the worst of all time. And he will be seen as a Neville Chamberlain-like figure who had the opportunity to stop or slow A number of autocratic practices and either chose to look the other way or to enable them. Because the thing is, in 2016, people were very doubtful that America could become an autocratic state. They hadn't seen this before. A lot of this was new to them. From 2016 through 2021, we saw all that Trump was capable of, and he committed a large multitude of crimes,RetryClaude hit the max length for a message and has paused its response. You can write Continue to keep the chat going.AKplease continueEditHere's the continuation of the transcript:Sarah Kendzior: ...and those crimes, not just him, but his cohort were never held accountable. And what they did during the Biden years was plan all of their next moves. Like you don't suddenly have a gulag for Americans in El Salvador, like just off the top of your head. You know, all of this takes planning. We knew about a lot of the plans, you know, the Democrats campaigned about combating Project 2025. And my question to them was, well, what what if you lose? How are you going to combat it then? You know what, if he gets back, what are you gonna do? They would be so offended. They're like, how dare you, you question us. How dare you question, you know, our plans? They're, like, well, I don't, you don't have a plan. Like, that's my question is what is the plan? And they didn't. And they could have spent those four years creating a bulwark against a lot of the most horrific policies that we're seeing now. Instead, they're kind of reacting on the fly if they're even reacting at all. And meanwhile, people are being targeted, deported, detained. They're suffering tremendously. And they're very, very scared. I think it's very scary to have a total dearth of leadership from where the, not just the opposition, but just people with basic respect for the constitution, our civil rights, etc., are supposed to be.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Project 2025, we've got David Graham on the show next week, who's written a book about Project 2025. Is there anything positive to report, Sarah? I mean, some people are encouraged by the behavior, at least on Friday, the 18th of April, who knows what will happen over the weekend or next week. Behavior of Harvard, some law firms are aggressively defending their rights. Should we be encouraged by the universities, law firms, even some corporate leaders are beginning to mutter under their breath about Trump and Trumpism?Sarah Kendzior: And it depends whether they actually have that power in wielded or whether they're just sort of trying to tamper down public dissent. I'm skeptical of these universities and law firms because I think they should have had a plan long ago because I was very obvious that all of this was going to happen and I feel so terribly for all of the students there that were abandoned by these administrations, especially places like Columbia. That gave in right away. What does hearten me though, you know, and I, as you said, I'd been on this tour, like I was all over the West coast. I've been all over, the Midwest and the South is, Americans, Americans do understand what's happening. There's always this like this culture in media of like, how do we break it to Americans? Like, yeah, well, we know, we know out here in Missouri that this is very bad. And I think that people have genuine concern for each other. I think they still have compassion for each other. I think there's a culture of cruelty that's promoted online and it's incentivized. You know, you can make money that way. You could get clicks that that way, whatever, but in real life, I think people feel vulnerable. They feel afraid, but I've seen so much kindness. I've been so much concern and determination from people who don't have very much, and maybe that's, you know, why people don't know about it. These are just ordinary folks. And so I have great faith in American people to combat this. And what I don't have faith in is our institutions. And I hope that these sort of in between places, places like universities who do a lot of good on one hand, but also can kind of act as like hedge funds. On the other hand, I hope they move fully to the side of good and that they purge themselves of these corrupt elements that have been within them for a long time, the more greedy. Aspects of their existence. I hope they see themselves as places that uphold civic life and history and provide intellectual resistance and shelter for students in the storm. They could be a really powerful force if they choose to be. It's never too late to change. I guess that's the message I want to bring home. Even if I'm very critical of these places, it's never to late for them to change and to do the right thing.Andrew Keen: Well, finally, Sarah, a lot of people are going to be watching this on my Substack page. Your Substack Page, your newsletter, They Knew, I think has last count, 52,000 subscribers. Is this the new model for independent writers, journalist thinkers like yourself? I'm not sure of those 52,00, how many of them are paid. You noted that your book has disappeared co-isindecially sometimes. So maybe some publishers are being intimidated. Is the future for independent thinkers, platforms like Substack, where independent authors like yourself can establish direct intellectual and commercial relations with their readers and followers?Sarah Kendzior: It's certainly the present. I mean, this is the only place or other newsletter outlets, I suppose, that I could go. And I purposefully divorced myself from all institutions except for my publisher because I knew that this kind of corruption would inhibit me from being able to say the truth. This is why I dropped out of academia, I dropped out of regular journalism. I have isolated myself to some degree on purpose. And I also just like being in control of this and having direct access to my readers. However, what does concern me is, you know, Twitter used to also be a place where I had direct access to people I could get my message out. I could circumvent a lot of the traditional modes of communication. Now I'm essentially shadow banned on there, along with a lot of people. And you know Musk has basically banned substack links because of his feud with Matt Taibbi. You know, that led to, if you drop a substack link in there, it just gets kind of submerged and people don't see it. So, you know, I think about Twitter and how positive I was about that, maybe like 12, 13 years ago, and I wonder how I feel about Substack and what will happen to it going forward, because clearly, you Know, Trump's camp realizes the utility of these platforms, like they know that a lot of people who are prominent anti authoritarian voices are using them to get the word out when they are when they lose their own platform at, like, say, the Washington Post or MSNBC or... Whatever network is corrupted or bullied. And so eventually, I think they'll come for it. And, you know, so stack has problems on its own anyway. So I am worried. I make up backups of everything. I encourage people to consume analog content and to print things out if they like them in this time. So get my book on that note, brand new analog content for you. A nice digital.Andrew Keen: Yeah, don't buy it digitally. I assume it's available on Kindle, but you're probably not too keen or even on Amazon and Bezos. Finally, Sarah, this is Friday. Fridays are supposed to be cheerful days, the days before the weekend. Is there anything to be cheerful about on April The 18th 2025 in America?Sarah Kendzior: I mean, yeah, there's things to be cheerful about, you know, pre spring, nice weather. I'm worried about this weekend. I'll just get this out real quick. You know, this is basically militia Christmas. You know, This is the anniversary of Waco, the Oklahoma City bombings, Columbine. It's Hitler's birthday. This is a time when traditionally American militia groups become in other words,Andrew Keen: Springtime in America.Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, springtime for Hitler. You know, and so I'm worried about this weekend. I'm worry that if there are anti-Trump protests that they'll be infiltrated by people trying to stoke the very riots that Trump said he wanted in order to, quote, make America great again and have everything collapse. So everyone, please be very, very careful this weekend heading out and just be aware of the. Of these dates and the importance of these days far predates Trump to, you know, militia groups and other violent extremist groups.Andrew Keen: Well, on that cheerful note, I asked you for a positive note. You've ruined everyone's weekend, probably in a healthy way. You are the Cassandra from St. Louis. Appreciate your bravery and honesty in standing up to Trump and Trumpism, MAGA America. Congratulations on the new book. As you say, it's available in analog form. You can buy it. Take it home, protect it, dig a hole in your garden and protect it from the secret police. Congratulations on the new book. As I said to you before we went live, it's a beautifully written book. I mean, you're noted as a polemicist, but I thought this book is your best written book, the other books were well written, but this is particularly well written. Very personal. So congratulations on that. And Sarah will have to get you back on the show. I'm not sure how much worse things can get in America, but no doubt they will and no doubt you will write about it. So keep well, keep safe and keep doing your brave work. Thank you so much.Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, you too. Thank you so much for your kind words and for having me on again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Our brains are delicate things. That, at least, is the view of the neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod, whose new book, The Ideological Brain, is a warning about how radical ideologies of both left and right can infect our brains. She argues that, in contrast with flexible thinking, ideological discourse involves rigid adherence to doctrines and anti-scientific dismissal of factual evidence. She notes that economic and political stress rigidifies our thought processes, making us more susceptible to ideological viruses. Ideology then, for Dr Zmigrod, is the new pandemic. Just as we defeated COVID, we need antidotes to fight this existential threat to our collective well-being. FIVE TAKEAWAYS* Ideological thinking is characterized by rigid adherence to doctrine and resistance to evidence, while flexible thinking involves updating beliefs based on new information.* Research shows that political extremists on both left and right demonstrate cognitive rigidity, while moderate thinkers exhibit greater cognitive flexibility.* Stress physically rigidifies thought processes, making people more susceptible to ideological thinking and extremism during challenging times.* Cognitive flexibility can be cultivated as a protective factor against extremism, though it requires active work to resist fixed identities and doctrines.* Zmigrod worries that AI may accelerate extremism by blurring the line between fact and fiction, potentially creating separate AI models for different ideological communities.Dr Leor Zmigrod is a political psychologist and neuroscientist investigating why some brains are susceptible to extreme ideologies and how minds can break free from rigid dogmas. Her first book, The Ideological Brain, is available now from Viking (Penguin Random House) and Henry Holt & Co (Macmillan), alongside over 15 translations.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of How to Fix Democracy, host Andrew Keen, speaks with journalist Sally Lehrman, founder of the Trust Project - a global initiative aimed at restoring trust in journalism. They discuss the origins of the project, inspired in part by the 1947 Hutchins Commission report on media responsibility, and how today's digital landscape has blurred the lines between news and content. Lehrman outlines the Trust Project's "Eight Trust Indicators" which help news outlets demonstrate transparency, ethical standards, and commitment to diverse voices. She also addresses the challenges posed by ideological biais, opinion vs news,  and journalism on platforms such as Substack. The conversation explores how media organizations can rebuild credibility, empower the public, and support a healthy democracy through responsible, clearly-labeled reporting.

MIT professor Thomas Levenson is one of America's most celebrated science writers and filmmakers. In his upcoming new book, So Very Small, Levenson charts the history of germ theory to underline how modern scientific research has changed the world and saved tens of millions of lives. Not surprisingly, then, Levenson expresses deep concern about the Trump administration's attacks on the American scientific establishment, particularly funding cuts affecting critical research. He warns against growing the anti-vaccine ideology, explaining how periods of rapid social change often trigger the kind of anti-expertise attitudes articulated by paranoid reactionaries like RFK Jr. FIVE TAKEAWAYS* Science in America is under assault by the Trump administration through funding cuts to critical research institutions like NIH, which doesn't just affect current work but dismantles research infrastructure that takes years to build.* Levenson's book "So Very Small" traces how humans discovered microbes and developed treatments for infectious diseases, showing both scientific progress and persistent resistance to medical innovations like vaccines.* Anti-vaccine sentiment has grown from fringe to mainstream, with RFK Jr.'s appointment as head of health policy representing a serious threat to public health despite the overwhelming evidence supporting vaccine efficacy.* The COVID pandemic demonstrated both scientific triumph (developing vaccines in record time) and societal division, reflecting a pattern where rapid social change often triggers anti-expertise attitudes.* Antibiotic resistance represents a growing crisis where previously curable infections are becoming untreatable, not because of scientific failure but because of social choices about how we've deployed these medications.Thomas Levenson is a professor of science writing at MIT. He is the author of several books, including So Very Small, Money for Nothing, The Hunt for Vulcan, Einstein in Berlin, and Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. He has also made ten feature-length documentaries (including a two-hour Nova program on Einstein) for which he has won numerous awards.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Liberals won't like it, but according to the Seattle based historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner, Trump's wannabe imperial presidency is a “natural outgrowth” of the centralized power of the FDR presidency. In a provocative Jacobin piece, Bessner contends that executive power has been expanding since FDR, with the U.S. President increasingly becoming an "elected monarch." The leftist Bessner criticizes American liberals for both obsessing over the fictional specter of fascism and for failing to address the economic inequality that enabled the rise of Trump. And he expresses pessimism about meaningful reform, arguing that 21st century capitalism has become too entrenched for significant changes without some dramatic external shock. 5 Takeaways from the Bessner Interview* Trump's presidency represents a continuation of American traditions rather than fascism, with his immigration policies echoing historical patterns like the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism.* The significant shift under Trump is his aggressive tariff policy against China, which represents a departure from decades of neoliberal economic approaches.* Presidential power has been expanding dramatically since FDR (who issued over 3,700 executive orders), creating what Bessner calls an "elected monarch" with increasingly unchecked authority.* The failure of liberal leadership, particularly Obama's inadequate response to the 2008 financial crisis and insufficient economic redistribution, created the conditions for Trump's rise.* Bessner expresses deep pessimism about the possibility of meaningful reform, suggesting that capitalism has become too entrenched globally for significant democratic changes without some external shock like climate disaster or war.Daniel Bessner is an historian and journalist. He is currently the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He previously held the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization and is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an Associate of the Alameda Institute, and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign; in 2024, for unclear reasons, the Russian government sanctioned him. Daniel is an intellectual historian, and his work has focused on three areas of inquiry: the history and contemporary practice of U.S. foreign relations; the history and theory of liberalism; and, most recently, the history and practice of the entertainment industry. He is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018), which you may order here. He is also the co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019), which you may order here; and the co-editor, with Michael Brenes, of Rethinking U.S. World Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations (Palgrave, 2024), which you may order here. In addition to his scholarship, he has published pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Nation, n+1, and other venues. In July 2022, he published a cover story in Harper's Magazine titled “Empire Burlesque: What Comes After the American Century?”; in May 2024, he published a cover story, also in Harper's, titled “The Life and Death of Hollywood: Film and Television Writers Face an Existential Threat,” which was also republished as the cover of the Italian magazine Internazionale.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Question: What was the position of 19th century American Jews to the Civil War and Slavery? Answer: Complicated. Very complicated.Painfully and, in some ways, shamefully complicated, according to the historian Richard Kreitner. In his new book, Fear No Pharaoh, Kreitner explores the radically diverse positions that American Jews held toward slavery during the Civil War. He highlights 6 prominent Jewish figures including Judah Benjamin (a Confederate leader), Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphael (who justified slavery using Torah), David Einhorn (an abolitionist rabbi), Isaac Mayer Wise (who advised Jews to stay out of the conflict), August Bondy (who fought with John Brown), and Ernestine Rose (a radical feminist activist). Kreitner explains how American Jews, numbering around 150,000 by 1860, were - like the rest of the (dis)United States - deeply divided on slavery, with most influenced by regional issues that usurped the supposedly universalist religious ethic of their faith. 5 KEEN ON AMERICA TAKEAWAYS * American Jews were deeply divided on slavery and the Civil War, with most adopting the political views of their geographic region rather than having a unified "Jewish position."* The Jewish experience with slavery in Egypt (celebrated in the Passover tradition) created a complex dynamic for American Jews confronting American slavery, with some using it to oppose slavery while others justified the practice.* Jewish figures like Judah Benjamin rose to high positions in the Confederacy, while others like Rabbi David Einhorn were forced to flee for their anti-slavery activism.* Anti-Semitism was relatively subdued in the American South before the Civil War (as Black enslavement served as the primary social hierarchy), but increased during and after the war.* Figures like Ernestine Rose represented an intersection of Jewish identity, abolitionism, women's rights activism, and freethinking, highlighting the diverse ways American Jews engaged with 19th century social reform movements.Richard Kreitner is the author of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union and Booked: A Traveler's Guide to Literary Locations Around the World. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Slate, Raritan, The Baffler, and other publications. He lives in the Hudson Valley, New York. In his new Substack podcast, Think Back, Kreitner interview US historians about connections between the past and the present.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Stephen Witt's last book was entitled How Music Got Free. His latest, The Thinking Machine, a history of NVIDIA and its CEO Jensen Huang, might have been called How Intelligence Got Expensive. It's about NVIDIA's role in both the multi trillion dollar AI revolution and the world's Taiwan-centric microchip economy. Witt explains how NVIDIA transformed itself from an obscure gaming graphics company into an AI hardware powerhouse by investing in scientific computing when competitors wouldn't. He describes Huang's relentless leadership style (including demanding Musk style weekly emails from 30,000 employees), the influence of his Taiwanese heritage, and NVIDIA's success in parallel computing as a post-Moore's Law company. * NVIDIA succeeded by taking a counterintuitive approach - investing heavily in academic computing markets that seemed unprofitable but eventually led to their AI dominance.* Jensen Huang has an unusual management style featuring a flat organizational structure with 60 direct reports, mandatory weekly emails from all employees, and public critiques of underperforming teams.* Huang's Taiwanese heritage and cultural background played a significant role in NVIDIA's success, particularly in establishing crucial manufacturing relationships with TSMC.* NVIDIA's focus on parallel computing positioned them as a post-Moore's Law company, allowing them to thrive when traditional chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD hit physical limitations.* Despite NVIDIA's current dominance, they face threats from Chinese competitors, potential shifts in manufacturing due to tariffs, and the challenge of maintaining control over increasingly powerful AI systems.Stephen Witt is the author of The Thinking Machine, a forthcoming book on the AI hardware giant Nvidia. His first book, How Music Got Free, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Financial Times, New York, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and GQ. He lives in Los Angeles, California.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Should death row prisoners have the right to demand to be executed? In her debut book The Volunteer, Bay Area journalist Gianna Toboni exposes the absurd bureaucratization of the American death penalty system through the story of Scott Dozier, a death row inmate who volunteered for execution. Convicted of two murders on circumstantial evidence, Dozier preferred death to living 22-24 hours daily in a cell. Despite his and the state's shared goal of execution, bureaucratic delays and legal challenges prevented it. Toboni describes how extended solitary confinement undermined Dozier's mental health, eventually leading to his suicide, which she suggests was effectively state-induced. Toboni questions whether Americans truly understand the monstrously inefficient system they fund, where death sentences cost ten times more than life imprisonment yet only 15% of death row inmates are actually executed.FIVE TAKEAWAYS IN THIS CONVERSATION WITH TOBONI* The death penalty system is dysfunctional: Despite sentencing people to death, states like Nevada rarely carry out executions (the last one in Nevada was in 2006), creating a system where people are sentenced but left in limbo—only about 15% of death row inmates are ever executed.* Solitary confinement conditions are severe: Dozier was kept in conditions Toboni describes as "psychological torture"—up to 24 hours a day in a small cell, without human contact, reading materials, or other stimulation, which severely deteriorated his mental health.* Death row inmates face higher suicide rates: The suicide rate on death row is approximately 10 times higher than in general prison population, suggesting the conditions push many to take their own lives rather than continue living in those circumstances.* The financial argument is compelling: Death penalty cases cost approximately 10 times more than life imprisonment cases, yet most sentences are never carried out, raising questions about resource allocation.* Humanizing the condemned complicates perspectives: Toboni's experience showed how meeting death row inmates and understanding their full life stories—not just their crimes—can complicate black-and-white views on capital punishment, even for those who oppose it on principle.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.GIANNA TOBONI is a two-time Emmy-winning documentarian and author with dozens of films that have aired on HBO, Showtime, Hulu and VICE. Toboni has traveled to more than 30 countries, including Iraq, Mexico, Somalia, Israel/Palestine/Gaza, Nigeria, Russia, Philippines, and many more, telling stories that highlight the most significant challenges facing each local community and the humanity at the center of them. She's covered the biggest national stories and feels some of the most powerful ones are often hidden right here in America.n Her debut book, THE VOLUNTEER, a story about her relationship with a death row inmate, who volunteered for execution, and the broader story of America's death penalty, will be published by Atria Books, a Simon and Schuster imprint, in 2025. Toboni was honored on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for Media. She was named a TEDx Speaker on truth and storytelling. Toboni is a Peabody and du-Pont Columbia Award finalist for her documentaries, has won two Emmys, a GLAAD, Gracie, two Front Page Awards, and a Webby for Best Documentary Series. She works alongside her sister, Jacqueline Toboni, to bring both scripted and unscripted projects to the screen through their production company, Mother Media.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Keach Hagey's upcoming new biography of OpenAI's Sam Altman is entitled The Optimist. But it could alternatively be called The Salesman. The Wall Street Journal reporter describes Altman as an exceptional salesman whose superpower is convincing (ie: selling) others of his vision. This was as true, she notes, in Altman's founding of OpenAI with Elon Musk, their eventual split, and the company's successful pivot to language models. Hagey details the dramatic firing and rehiring of Altman in 2023, attributing it to tensions between AI safety advocates and commercial interests. She reveals Altman's personal ownership of OpenAI's startup fund despite public claims to the contrary, and discusses his ongoing challenge of fixing the company's seemingly irresolvable nonprofit/for-profit structure. 5 Key Takeaways * Sam Altman's greatest skill is his persuasive ability - he can "sell ice to people in northern climates" and convince investors and talent to join his vision, which was crucial for OpenAI's success.* OpenAI was founded to counter AI risks but ironically accelerated AI development - starting an "arms race" after ChatGPT's release despite their charter explicitly stating they wanted to avoid such a race.* The 2023 firing of Altman involved tensions between the "effective altruism" safety-focused faction and Altman's more commercially-oriented approach, with the board believing they saw "a pattern of deliberate deception."* Altman personally owned OpenAI's startup fund despite publicly claiming he had no equity in OpenAI, which was a significant factor in the board's distrust leading to his firing.* Despite regaining his position, Altman still faces challenges converting OpenAI's unusual structure into a more traditional for-profit entity to secure investment, with negotiations proving difficult after the leadership crisis.Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she focuses on the intersection of media and technology. She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files, a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google's advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew). Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal, reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom. She is the author of The King of Content: Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire, published by HarperCollins, and The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future, published by W.W. Norton & Company. Before joining the Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, The National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice. She has a bachelor's and a master's in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y., with her husband, three daughters and dog.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It might be Liberation Day today, but according to Paul Rice, founder of US Fair Trade and author of Every Purchase Matters, Trump's tariffs are dumb. Rice firmly distances Fair Trade from Trump's controversial trade policies, calling them "backward" and "bad for American business." He explains how Fair Trade - which has expanded beyond coffee to include 40 products, from produce to furniture - certifies products through rigorous standards ensuring workers receive fair wages and environmental protections. Every purchase does indeed matter. And, in contrast with Trump's short sighted tariffs, Rice's Fair Trade movement is worth celebrating today. Five Key Takeaways * Fair Trade is fundamentally different from Trump's tariff policies - Rice strongly distinguishes between Trump's "big stick diplomacy" approach to trade and Fair Trade's focus on equitable market transactions that benefit workers and the environment.* Fair Trade certification involves rigorous standards - Products earn certification through a 200-point checklist covering social, labor, and environmental criteria, with independent annual audits ensuring compliance.* Sustainable products don't necessarily cost more - Rice challenges the "fallacy" that ethical products must be more expensive, citing companies like NatureSuite that have adopted Fair Trade standards without raising consumer prices.* The Fair Trade movement is expanding rapidly - What began with coffee has grown to encompass approximately 40 product categories including tea, produce, apparel, furniture, and even cosmetics, with fresh produce being the fastest-growing segment (32% growth last year).* Ethical consumption is a form of everyday activism - Rice promotes the idea that Every Purchase Matters, suggesting consumers can "vote for change" through their purchasing decisions rather than waiting for political elections.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Paul Rice is a pioneer in the global Fair Trade and sustainability movements. Raised with a deep sense of compassion for the poor, Paul has spent 40 years fighting poverty and environmental destruction. The quintessential social entrepreneur, this passion led him to develop innovative models that harness the power of consumers and business to improve people's lives and protect the planet. Paul launched Fair Trade USA (formerly known as TransFair USA) in late 1998 in a one-room warehouse in downtown Oakland, California. Under his leadership, Fair Trade USA became the leading certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, enlisting the support of over 1,700 major brands and retailers who sell everything from coffee and chocolate to apparel and seafood. By 2024, the organization and its partners had generated over $1.2 billion in cumulative financial impact for over 1 million farmers, workers and their families in 70 countries worldwide. Before founding Fair Trade USA, Paul worked with family farmers for 11 years in the highlands of Nicaragua, where he founded and led the country's first Fair Trade organic coffee export cooperative. This deep, firsthand experience with the transformative impact of Fair Trade in the lives of farmers and their communities ultimately inspired him to return to the United States with the dream of mainstreaming the movement in this country. Paul has been named Ethical Corporation's 2019 Business Leader of the Year and has been recognized four times as Social Capitalist of the Year by Fast Company magazine, which dubbed him a “rebel in the boardroom.” He is also a recipient of the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the World Economic Forum's Social Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Ashoka Fellowship. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative, Skoll World Forum, Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, TEDx, Consumer Goods Forum, and numerous universities and conferences around the world. Paul is regarded as one of today's leading visionaries and practitioners for sustainable sourcing and conscious capitalism.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Thanks for reading Keen On America! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Happy April Fools, everyone! Although, according to cultural critic David Masciotra every day in Trump 2.0 America is now April Fool's Day. KEEN ON AMERICA regular Masciotra argues that the new Trump's administration represents a "bipartisan phantasm" featuring absurdly unqualified and ignorant figures from both right (Hegseth & Vance) and left (RFK Jr. & Tulsi Gabbard). Masciotra explores how the destruction of media gatekeepers has allowed fantasy to dominate reality - creating what he dubs, crediting Kurt Anderson, Trump's Fantasyland America. Thanks for reading Keen On America! This post is public so feel free to share it.Five KEEN ON AMERICA Takeaways from this Conversation with David Masciotra* America as "Fantasyland" - Masciotra view current American politics as increasingly absurd, with Trump's administration embodying a "fantasyland" where truth and reality are secondary to spectacle. He argues this stems from a longer American tradition of accommodating unfactual, anti scientific beliefs.* Bipartisan Delusion - While fantastical thinking may be more prevalent on the right, Masciotra identifies figures like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard as examples of how the left also contributes to this phenomenon, describing this collective idiocy as a "bipartisan phantasm."* Media Gatekeepers - The conversation highlights how the demolition of traditional media gatekeepers has allowed crazy fringe ideas to gain mainstream traction, with Masciotra confessing that his youthful opposition to “elite” gatekeepers was misguided.* Reality vs. Fantasy - I expresses more faith that reality (such as the economic consequences of tariffs) will eventually overcome fantasy. But Masciotra is more pessimistic, citing examples of people maintaining delusions that do them great personal harm.* Democratic Strategy - We discuss whether Democrats need to incorporate more "fantasy" and humor in their approach, with Masciotra suggesting Democrats need to balance factual standards with more imagination, spontaneity, and willingness to be confrontational.David Masciotra is the author of six books, including Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy and I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters. He has written for Salon, the Washington Monthly, and many other publications, on politics, music, and literature.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

This is an important interview. I've always thought of the political essayist Peter Wehner as representing the conscience of conservative, religious America. Wehner, who writes both for the Atlantic and the New York Times, has been offering a moral critique of Trump's MAGA movement since 2015. And now that many of his direst warnings are being realized, his voice is amongst the most important in America. In this conversation, Wehner, a religious conservative who worked in several Republican administrations, reiterates his moral critique of Trump, explaining how revenge has become an obsessive emotion that is corrupting both MAGA leaders and followers. He expresses concern about how Trump's behavior is "emotionally rewiring" otherwise decent people, and contrasts this with a figure like the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel who stood defiantly for truth in the face of petty, revengeful authoritarianism. Five Key Takeaways from the Wehner Interview* Revenge as Trump's driving force - Wehner identifies revenge as Trump's core motivation, describing it as an insatiable appetite that crowds out noble emotions and justifies destructive actions.* Moral corruption spreads - Wehner warns that Trump's behavior is "emotionally rewiring" his supporters, with many now taking pleasure in cruelty and transgression rather than just tolerating it.* Religious hypocrisy - Wehner expresses deep disappointment in white evangelical Christians' embrace of Trump, noting the contradiction between their professed faith values and their celebration of Trump's cruelty.* Truth-telling as resistance - Inspired by dissidents like Vaclav Havel, Wehner emphasizes that speaking truth is essential resistance to authoritarianism, even when institutions and leaders are capitulating.* Institutional courage matters - Wehner contrasts organizations and leaders who stand firm (like The Atlantic) with those making "deals with the devil" (like The Washington Post), highlighting the importance of courage during this "stress test" for democracy.Peter Wehner, a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, two of the most prestigious media journals in the world. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports and friendships. Mr. Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Mr. Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which The New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare believes that the publishing industry is about to be dramatically swept away by AI. I'm not sure. Here, for example, is Anthropic ‘s (Claude) 100 word summary of this week's KEEN ON AMERICA conversation with Keith:“The conversation between Andrew Keen and Keith Teare discusses OpenAI's new image generation tool that can now integrate text with images—a capability Keith considers revolutionary for publishing and graphic design. Andrew remains skeptical about its creative value. They debate whether this technology threatens graphic designers' jobs, with Keith arguing it will transform publishing workflows. They also discuss Google's experiment showing European users don't miss news content, Nick Denton's views on China, Trump's tariff policies, and Elon Musk merging X with his AI company. Keith highlights how AI is becoming integrated into content creation and publishing.”This sounds to me as if it was written by a12 year-old. Certainly not the kind of automated intelligence to keep a publisher up at night. However, if I ask Claude for five takeaways about our conversation this week, I get a much smarter response:Five Key Takeaways from the Conversation with Keith:* OpenAI's new image generation tool can now integrate text with images—a capability Keith views as revolutionary for publishing and graphic design, while Andrew remains skeptical about its creative value.* There's debate about AI's impact on creative professions—Keith believes tools like OpenAI's new image generator will transform graphic design workflows, while Andrew argues that human creativity remains essential.* Google's experiment revealed that removing European news content had negligible impact on user engagement, challenging assumptions about news content's value.* Elon Musk is merging X (formerly Twitter) with his AI company XAI, which Keith views as a smart financial move that could create a viable competitor to OpenAI.* Trump's tariff policies, particularly on vehicles, reflect a commitment to using trade barriers to encourage domestic manufacturing, signaling a broader trend toward economic nationalism.Smarter for sure. Maybe Keith is right. Perhaps traditional publishing companies like Adobe really are about to swept away by the AI revolution. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Has Signalgate triggered a credible resistance movement to Trump 2.0? Brookings scholar and Atlantic columnist Jonathan Rauch isn't particularly optimistic. He discusses the emerging resistance from law firms, media, and some religious groups, while expressing concern about Trump potential defiance of Supreme Court orders. Rauch observes that the opposition to Trump's authoritarianism remains fragmented, but believes that eventually counter-organization will develop, though he remains uncertain whether it will happen quickly enough to be effective.Five Key Takeaways from the Rauch Interview* Patrimonial Governance: Trump's administration operates on what Rauch describes as a patrimonial model where loyalty to Trump is paramount, with officials trying to "work toward the Führer" by anticipating his desires rather than awaiting orders.* Institutional Breakdown: Rauch believes the U.S. has moved from a three-branch to effectively a two-branch government, with Congress largely absent as a check on executive power.* Fragmented Resistance: Opposition to Trump remains disorganized, with Rauch noting that resistance is forming but suffering from a collective action problem where institutions (law firms, universities, think tanks) are being picked off individually.* Supreme Court Concerns: Rauch predicts Trump may openly defy a Supreme Court order in his second term, which would represent an unprecedented constitutional crisis.* Religious Politics: Despite writing a book on Christian politics, Rauch sees no cracks in evangelical support for Trump, though he does believe some religious groups might eventually respond to extreme measures like deportations or humanitarian crises.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Brookings Institute's Governance Studies program and the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer of The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His many Brookings publications include the 2021 book “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth”, as well as the 2015 ebook “Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy.” Other books include “The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better after 50” (2018) and “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” (2004). He has also authored research on political parties, marijuana legalization, LGBT rights and religious liberty, and more.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

This isn't exactly the radical message one would expect from a primary physician from Columbia, Maryland. But according to Dr Andy Lazris, co-author of A Return to Healing, Big Pharma wields an iron grip on the American healthcare system. And it's only by aggressively challenging the control of the pharmaceutical industry, Lazris says, that we can begin to reform the system. Lazris discusses how pharmaceutical companies heavily influence healthcare through funding medical organizations, research, and federal agencies like the CDC and FDA. He advocates for a return to patient-centered medicine with longer appointment times and less emphasis on unnecessary tests and medications. He suggests three core reforms: removing pharmaceutical influence from federal agencies, changing Medicare reimbursement to favor primary care over procedures, and increasing Medicare funding for primary care residency programs. Interestingly, Lazris views RFK Jr.'s health agency cuts as chaotic, but potentially beneficial.Five Key Takeaways from Andy Lazris's Interview* Pharmaceutical Industry Influence: The pharmaceutical industry has excessive influence over healthcare, including federal agencies (CDC, FDA), medical associations, academic research, and treatment protocols, prioritizing profit over patient wellbeing.* Primary Care Crisis: Primary care physicians are a "dying breed" despite their importance, as they face burnout from administrative burdens, quality metrics, protocol constraints, and insufficient time with patients.* Protocol-Driven Medicine: Doctors are increasingly forced to follow standardized protocols and quality indicators rather than providing individualized care, with financial penalties for not adhering to these guidelines.* Patient-Centered Reform: Lazris advocates for a return to healing through longer patient visits (40 minutes), focusing on lifestyle factors like diet and exercise (duh), and reducing unnecessary testing and medication.* Actionable Reforms: Lazris proposes three immediate reforms: eliminating pharmaceutical influence in federal agencies, restructuring Medicare reimbursement to favor primary care over procedures, and increasing Medicare funding for primary care residency programs.Dr. Andy Lazris is a physician Board Certified in Internal Medicine. He has practiced both primary care Internal Medicine and Geriatrics for the past 30 years. In addition to Internal Medicine board certification, he has a Certified Medical Director (CMD) degree and is the director of several long term care facilities in Howard County and beyond. He also is a certified wound specialist physician with a CWSP degree. Dr. Lazris is a Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. He received a full merit scholarship to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and completed his Internal Medicine training at University of Virginia Hospital. In 2021 and 2022 Dr. Lazris received the prestigious Top-Doc recognition in Geriatrics for the Baltimore region. In 2022 he was named one of America's most honored doctors. He has received numerous accolades and awards for his practice of medicine, his writing, and his work to reform health care.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Amidst all the chaos and hysteria of Trump 2.0, some things in America never change. As the Atlanta based journalist Brian Goldstone notes in There Is No Place For Us, America's “invisible” working homeless population have been mostly ignored by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Goldstone reveals how approximately 4 million Americans who work full-time jobs cannot today afford housing, with many living in extended-stay hotels, cars, or doubled-up with others. He highlights that 93% of homeless families in Atlanta are Black, and argues that these working homeless are victims of both failed economic policies and a lack of tenant protections. Goldstone criticizes both political parties for failing to address this crisis and calls for treating housing as a fundamental right rather than a commodity.Five Key Takeaways from this Goldstone Interview* Working Homelessness Crisis: Approximately 4 million Americans experience homelessness despite holding jobs, forming an "invisible" crisis where families live in extended-stay hotels, cars, or doubled-up with others.* Racial Disparity: In Atlanta, 93% of homeless families are Black, revealing significant racial disparities in housing insecurity, despite the city's reputation as a "Black Mecca."* Exploitative Housing Systems: Extended-stay hotels function as expensive, unregulated homeless shelters where families pay significantly more ($17,000 for eight months in one case) than they would for apartments they can't access due to credit barriers.* Bipartisan Failure: Both Republican and Democratic administrations have failed to address the root causes of housing insecurity, with Goldstone describing it as a "bipartisan abandonment of working poor people."* Housing as Commodity: The fundamental problem is treating housing as an investment vehicle or commodity rather than a basic human necessity, allowing it to be "auctioned off to the highest bidder."Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The California Sunday Magazine, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown child This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Which countries are best positioned to thrive in the 21st century? No, it's not Denmark. Nor China. According to Parag Khanna, the Singapore based geo-strategist, the three countries that top what he calls The Periodic Table of States are Germany, Japan and Switzerland. And the United States of America, Khanna says, going against conventional wisdom, isn't far behind. Khanna's analysis describes a "post-Westphalian world" where non-state actors like corporations and diasporas hold significant influence. Khanna challenges the more conventional rankings of countries by incorporating climate resilience, governance quality, and economic stability alongside traditional metrics into his Periodic Table.The 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our conversation with Khanna* Traditional power metrics are insufficient for measuring state stability - Khanna's "Periodic Table of States" incorporates factors like climate resilience, governance quality, and institutional effectiveness alongside conventional metrics.* Small states often outperform large powers in stability - Switzerland, Germany, and Japan top the rankings while large nations like India, Brazil, and Russia fall into the second tier.* We live in a "post-Westphalian" world where non-state actors (corporations like Google, diaspora networks, and even organized crime) wield significant power beyond traditional nation-state frameworks.* Migration management varies significantly across governance systems - Khanna notes that non-democratic states like UAE and Singapore have effectively managed high immigration rates while democratic nations have struggled politically with migration issues.* A "neo-Hanseatic league" of small, innovative states (like Estonia, Singapore, and Israel) is emerging as a powerful network outside traditional alliance structures, forming their own connections through academic exchanges, free labor mobility, and economic partnerships.Parag Khanna is Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo, the leading AI-powered geospatial analytics platform. He is the internationally bestselling author of seven books including MOVE: Where People Are Going for a Better Future (2021), preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (2019), as well as a trilogy of books on the future of world order beginning with The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008), followed by How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), and concluding with Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (2016). He is also the author of Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012). Parag was named one of Esquire's “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and featured in WIRED magazine's “Smart List.” He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and Bachelors and Masters degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Born in India and raised in the UAE, New York and Germany, he has traveled to more than 150 countries and is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The writer Daniel Oppenheimer and his wife, Jessica, have been going to marriage therapy for many years. But, as he confessed in a recent New York Times magazine piece, he had to go to a superstar councillor to finally recognize that the biggest problem with his marriage was himself. Oppenheimer explains how renowned therapist Terry Real helped them, particularly by teaching him about healthy expressions of power. As with yesterday's show with William Deresiewicz, our conversation expands to broader societal themes about modern masculinity, with Oppenheimer suggesting many men are now struggling with emotional maturity in relationships.Five KEEN ON AMERICA Takeaways with Daniel Oppenheimer* Self-awareness in relationships is crucial - Oppenheimer's confessional essay acknowledges his own reactive behaviors (anger, walking out, saying "f**k you") as primary problems in his marriage.* Men often struggle with emotional maturity - The conversation highlights how many men, including Oppenheimer, have difficulty processing emotions in healthy ways within relationships.* Power dynamics matter in relationships - Therapist Terry Real introduced the concept of "power with" versus "power over," suggesting passive men aren't effective in relationships, but dominating men aren't either.* Cultural representations shape expectations - Oppenheimer discusses how media portrayals of relationships (romantic comedies vs. train wrecks) create unrealistic relationship models without showing the healthy middle ground.* Good relationships require hard work - Despite 18 years of ups and downs, Oppenheimer and his wife chose to stay together, work through their problems, and find a path forward, suggesting commitment and effort are central to lasting relationships.Daniel Oppenheimer is a writer whose features and reviews have been featured in the Washington Post, Texas Monthly, Boston Globe, Slate.com, The Point, Washington Monthly, Guernica, The New Republic, Tablet Magazine, and Salon.com. He received his BA in religious studies from Yale University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Jessica and his kids Jolie, Asa, and Gideon.Exit Right, which was published in February 2016 by Simon & Schuster, was his first book. His other book, Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art, was published in June 2021 by The University of Texas Press. It was reviewed in a variety of places, but the best review (ie the one that said the nice things most persuasively) was this one by Blake Smith.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Few observers are more insightful than the critic William Deresiewicz at identifying the changing landscape of American culture. In my latest conversation with Deresiewicz, best known for his book Excellent Sheep, we explore how young American men are increasingly drawn to right-wing politics while feeling socially devalued and alienated by progressive rhetoric. Deresiewicz critiques universities for embracing a censorious left-wing ideology that has become intellectually stagnant. He contrasts this with the creative ferment happening on the right, while at the same time rejecting Trump's authoritarian tactics against universities. Deresiewicz argues that art has lost its cultural significance as consumption has become disposable, and notes that a new counter-elite is attempting to destroy the established liberal elite rather than join its exclusive club.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Deresiewicz: * Young men, particularly those without elite educations, are increasingly drawn to right-wing politics partly due to economic changes, dating app dynamics, and what Deresiewicz perceives as dismissive rhetoric from the progressive left.* Universities have embraced a "far left progressive ideology" that has been repeatedly rejected by voters even in traditionally liberal areas, yet Deresiewicz condemns Trump's authoritarian tactics against these institutions.* The political left has become intellectually stagnant, with creative energy now more visible on the right, while progressive spaces have become censorious and intolerant of debate.* Art has lost its cultural significance as streaming platforms and internet culture have turned creative works into disposable "content," diminishing both audience engagement and artistic seriousness.* A new counter-elite (represented by figures like Trump and Musk) isn't seeking admission to established power structures but rather aims to destroy them entirely, representing a significant shift in elite dynamics.William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His most recent book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society. His current project is a historically informed memoir about being Jewish. Bill has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper's, The London Review of Books, and many other publications, has been translated into 19 languages and included in over 40 college readers and other anthologies. Bill taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer. He has appeared on The Colbert Report, Here & Now, The New Yorker Radio Hour, and many other outlets and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges as well as at American Jewish University and the University of San Diego. His previous books are The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech, A Jane Austen Education, and Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets. Bill is a member of the board (directorial, editorial, or advisory) of The Matthew Strother Center for the Examined Life, a retreat and study program in Catskill, NY; The Metropolitan Review, a new literary journal; Tivnu: Building Justice, which runs a Jewish service-learning gap year and other programs in Portland, OR; the Prohuman Foundation, which promotes the ideals of individual identity and shared humanity; Circle, a group coaching and purpose-finding program for college and graduate students; and Clio's, a selectively curated, chronologically organized bookstore in Oakland.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

How to achieve BIG change with small acts? According to the Stanford psychologist Gregory Walton, this requires what, in his new book, he dubs Ordinary Magic. Small psychological interventions , Walton argues, can create significant positive changes. He explains that people often face "agency-depriving questions" that undermine their confidence and sense of belonging. His research shows how addressing these concerns through simple but powerful psychological reframes and supportive interactions can help individuals overcome obstacles. Walton distinguishes his evidence-based approach from typical self-help books and "nudge" tactics, emphasizing that while these interventions may appear simple, they require careful design based on deep understanding of human psychology.Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our conversation with Walton:* "Ordinary magic" refers to everyday experiences that help people overcome limiting self-doubts, creating potential for extraordinary positive change.* People often face psychological barriers in the form of questions like "Can I do it?" "Do I belong?" and "Does this matter?" which can become self-fulfilling prophecies.* Unlike behavorial economics style "nudge" approaches that treat people like objects to be manipulated, Walton's interventions aim to help people understand and reframe how they make sense of challenging situations.* Simple psychological reframes (like telling a tired child "when you're tired and keep going, your muscles get stronger") can have profound effects on persistence and achievement.* Creating environments where people feel they belong and are valued can dramatically improve outcomes - as demonstrated by interventions that reduced juvenile recidivism from 69% to 29% by connecting students with supportive teachers.* Greg Walton, PhD, is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Walton's research is supported by many foundations, including Character Lab, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He has been covered in major media outlets including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

On Thursday, we featured a conversation with Red Scare author Clay Risen about Joe McCarthy, Donald Trump and the Paranoid Style of American History. Today our subject is one of the best known victims of McCarthyism - the German writer Thomas Mann. In His Liberties essay “Mannhood: The Coming Revival of Democracy,” Morten Hoi Jensen writes about how Mann, as an exile from Nazi Germany, toured the United States in the spring of 1938 lecturing in support of New Deal democracy. Thomas Mann's brave defense of American democracy might now appear as a model for dissenting intellectuals in Trump's America. Especially since Mann himself became a victim of the anti communist witch hunt after the War. Here are the five KEEN ON takeways in our conversation with Morten Hoi Jensen about Thomas Mann:* Thomas Mann was initially a conservative artist who became an advocate for democracy as he witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany. His political views evolved significantly from his earlier "apolitical" stance to becoming an outspoken critic of Nazism.* Mann's 1938 book and lecture tour "The Coming Victory of Democracy" warned Americans that democracy was vulnerable even in the United States. He saw parallels between pre-Nazi Germany and aspects of American society, which later contributed to his decision to leave the US during the McCarthy era.* Mann became a victim of McCarthyism in the 1950s. He was labeled as a "premature anti-fascist" by American reactionaries despite his prominence as a Nobel Prize-winning author who had been welcomed to America and had even visited the White House during the Roosevelt administration.* Throughout his life and work, Mann engaged in intense self-criticism and introspection about Germany's descent into fascism. Unlike many other political commentators, he looked inward and questioned his own early nationalistic writings, wondering if he had inadvertently contributed to Nazi ideology.* Mann's approach to politics was always that of an artist rather than a political analyst. His views were complex and often contradictory, yet his willingness to engage with difficult political questions through both his fiction (particularly in "Doctor Faustus") and his public speaking made him an important moral voice during a tumultuous period in history.Morten Hoi Jensen is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen, which was published by Yale University Press in 2017 with a foreword by James Wood. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics, The Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, and Commonweal, among other publications. He is represented by Max Moorhead at Massie & McQuilkin.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

American history, Clay Risen reminds us, has an uncanny knack of repeating itself. In Red Scare, his important new book about blacklists, McCarthyism and the making of modern America, Risen suggests that Trump and MAGA have happened before. First as the tragedy of Joe McCarthy then as farcical Donald Trump? Or might today's latest chapter in the paranoid style of American history actually be its most consequential and thus tragic?Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in this conversation with Risen:* Historical Parallels to Today: Risen suggests that there are striking parallels between the McCarthy era and current American politics under Trump, with similar tactics being used to target perceived enemies and "others" within society. The infrastructure created during previous periods of paranoia (like the FBI and certain immigration laws) is being repurposed in the present day.* Bipartisan Nature of the Red Scare: While often associated with Republicans, the Red Scare had bipartisan elements. Risen explains that Democrats like Harry Truman implemented loyalty programs, and figures like JFK positioned themselves carefully regarding anti-communist sentiment. This challenges the notion that such movements are solely partisan.* Targeting Vulnerable Groups: Both historically and today, political movements often target the most vulnerable groups first. During the Red Scare, Risen explains that was suspected communists and homosexuals; today, transgender people face similar targeting as political pawns and scapegoats.* Impact Beyond the Obviously Political: Risen reminds us that the Red Scare affected ordinary Americans across many sectors - teachers, Hollywood professionals, government workers - whose lives were ruined based on rumors, associations, or past affiliations. This led to widespread conformity as people self-censored to avoid scrutiny.* The Role of Institutions as Backstops: Risen is cautiously optimistic about how America's current paranoid periods might end. He suggests that the judicial system (particularly the Supreme Court) represents the most effective backstop against MAGA excesses, much as the Warren Court eventually helped end McCarthy-era abuses of civil liberties.Clay Risen, a reporter and editor at The New York Times, is the author of Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. His other recent books include The Impossible Collection of Whiskey (October, 2020) and Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland (October, 2018). He is also the author of the spirits bestseller American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye: A Guide to the Nation's Favorite Spirit, now in its sixth printing with more than 100,000 copies sold. It is widely considered the bible on American whiskey and placed Risen among the leading authorities on the history, business, and diversity of U.S. spirits. Risen has served as a judge on multiple spirit award committees, including the prestigious Ultimate Spirits Challenge. In addition to Red Scare, Risen is the author of The Crowded Hour: Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Riders and the Dawn of the American Century, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019 and a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Prize in Military History; A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination; and The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act. A graduate of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and the University of Chicago, Risen grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two children. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

What is the MAGA movement's aesthetic? According to the New York Times' Dan Brooks, it's an aesthetic captured by the generative AI video “Trump Gaza”. Childishly absurd, it's an aesthetic, Brooks suggests, of “bearded belly dancers, an Elon Musk look-alike on the beach and a golden statue of President Trump”. It's not reality, of course. There are neither bearded belly dancers nor golden statues of Trump in Gaza right now. It doesn't even resemble actual MAGA America. But as Brooks notes, the MAGA aesthetic - driven by AI generated visuals - is social and cultural “posturing”. It's the post-ironic irony of social media. Unseriously serious. Designed for Instagram and TikTok. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Dan Brooks:* The MAGA style employs a unique form of irony - Brooks describes it as "unstable irony" rather than the "stable irony" of traditional satirists like Jonathan Swift or Stephen Colbert. This style mixes sincere statements with exaggerations and jokes in a way that makes it difficult to determine what's meant seriously.* Generative AI has been embraced by MAGA communities - The conversation highlights how conservative online communities have adopted AI technology for creating content (like the Gaza video discussed) at a higher rate than other groups, enabling them to produce visually impressive media quickly that aligns with their messaging style.* The relationship between politics and morality is shifting (duh) - Brooks contrasts his earlier writing about how social media "weaponized morality" with the MAGA approach, which he characterizes as "anti-moral" rather than amoral—a deliberate rejection of or reaction against perceived moralism in American politics.* Politics increasingly operates on "vibes" rather than facts - Brooks suggests that the "fact-based era in politics" may have been an illusion, with voters making decisions based on associations and cultural identity rather than policy specifics or factual information.* Contemporary American culture is saturated in irony - The conversation traces how irony has become embedded in American communication since the mid-90s, when even institutional messaging began adopting an ironic stance. Brooks notes that in current culture, "the worst thing you can be is cringe or overly sincere."Dan Brooks is a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Harper's, Pitchfork, and other publications. He lives in Montana with his handsome dog.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Andrew Checchia, a young journalist at NewsJunkie.net, requested an interview with me about the current state of American journalism. So here are my thoughts about the Fourth Estate's role in democracy, our supposedly dwindling trust in media, the ongoing cult of amateurism in journalism and Trump's successful merging of news and entertainment. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from my interview with Checchia:* The Fourth Estate's Role in Democracy* I present journalism not as a formal branch of government but as a consequence of democracy* I believe journalism is necessary for a functioning democracy but I certainly don't think people can or should be forced to consume news* I defend "elite" journalism, comparing it to other professional fields like medicine or law* Trust in Media* I argue that while trust in journalism has declined, people who pay for subscriptions to The New York Times or Wall Street Journal likely trust those sources* I suggest (duh) the real problem isn't with journalism itself but with broader social, educational and cultural problems* I argue that traditional newspapers provide understood biases, while social media offers no way to determine credibility or truth* Digital Media and Amateurism* I discuss how the internet has disrupted traditional media through Web 2.0 style platforms like Craigslist (which decimated local newspapers) * I'm skeptical about most nonprofit news experiments, believing they only preach to the converted* New platforms like Substack, I argue, tend to create a winner-take-all economy rather than supporting a new middle class of journalists* Politics and Entertainment* I note how politics and entertainment have now totally collapsed together in American culture* I discuss how Trump treated politics like reality television, serializing it for an audience already comfortable with this type of medium* I believe people have become addicted to narrative forms derived from reality television and serialized Netflix style shows* Future Outlook* While careful about making predictions, I suggest the current bizarre political situation cannot continue indefinitely* I express cautious optimism about younger generations, believing they've been unfairly written off and will eventually take power* I note a pathetic, “Schumeresque” gerontocratic quality in American politics that needs complete overhaulKeen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Long-time views of the show know that I've always been skeptical of equating Trump/MAGA with European fascism. I've always thought it historically facile and misleading. But I'm beginning to change my mind. Take, for example, David Masciotra's thoughts on Trump's “ravenous bigotry” toward the trans community. As Masciotra warns, this is the kind of organized, willful persecution of powerless minorities that fascist parties openly pursued while in power. Meanwhile, as Masciotra notes, prominent Dems like Gavin Newsom are staging a “shameful retreat” on trans rights and inviting neo-fascists like Steve Bannon onto their podcast shows. And then there's Schumer. Oy.Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways with our conversation with Masciotra* Democrats' retreat on trans rights: Masciotra argues that Democrats, including figures like Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel, are retreating from defending transgender rights after the election loss, which he views as both a moral failure and a strategic mistake.* Targeted anti-trans rhetoric: According to Masciotra, 41% of Trump's campaign ads specifically targeted transgender Americans, demonstrating how the issue has been deliberately weaponized for political purposes despite transgender people making up less than 1% of the population.* Trans rights as the "first course": Masciotra warns that "bigotry is ravenous," suggesting that abandoning transgender rights opens the door to attacks on other minority groups, comparing it to a restaurant menu where "trans people are the first course."* Democratic leadership criticism: David Masciotra is highly critical of Democratic leadership, particularly Chuck Schumer, whom he describes as "pathetic" and "inert" in his response to Trump's policies, with Masciotra noting a generational divide in the party's approach to resistance.* Authoritarian tactics and erasure: Masciotra discusses concerning developments like the National Park Service removing transgender references from Stonewall Rebellion information, which he characterizes as a "totalitarian termination of knowledge" mirroring authoritarian tactics described in Orwell's 1984.David Masciotra is an author, lecturer, and journalist. He is the author of Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy (Melville House Publishing, 2024) I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (I.B. Tauris, 2020), Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky), Barack Obama: Invisible Man (Eyewear Publishers, 2017), and Metallica by Metallica, a 33 1/3 book from Bloomsbury Publishers, which has been translated into Chinese and Greek. In 2010, Continuum Books published his first book, Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. Masciotra writes regularly for the New Republic, Washington Monthly, Progressive, the Los Angeles Review of Books, CrimeReads, No Depression, and the Daily Ripple. He has also written for Salon, the Daily Beast, CNN, Atlantic, Washington Post, AlterNet, Indianapolis Star, and CounterPunch. Several of his political essays have been translated into Spanish for publication at Korazon de Perro.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

So who, exactly is government. It's the question that Michael Lewis and an all-star team of writers address in a particularly timely new volume of essays. Who is Government? According to the Montana based Sarah Vowell, author of “The Equalizer”, an essay in the volume about the National Archives, government enables all American citizens to find stories about themselves. Vowell praises the modesty of most government employees. But she warns, the work of public servants like the National Archives' Pamela Wright is anything but modest and represents the core foundation of American democracy. Vowell's message is the antidote to the chainsaw. Essential listening in our surreal times.Here are the five Keen On America takeaways in this conversation with Vowell:* The National Archives as a democratic resource: Pamela Wright's work at the National Archives focused on digitizing records (over 300 million so far) to make them accessible to all Americans, regardless of where they live. This democratization of access allows people to bypass intimidating physical buildings and access their history from anywhere.* Public servants are often modest and unsung: Sarah describes how government workers like Wright tend to be modest, team-oriented people who focus on doing their job rather than seeking recognition. This stands in contrast to more visible or self-promoting public figures.* Personal connections to national archives: The conversation reveals how Americans can find their own family stories within government records. Sarah discovered her own family history, including her grandfather's WPA work and connections to the Cherokee Nation's Trail of Tears through archival documents.* Government's impact on opportunity: Sarah emphasizes how government programs like the Higher Education Act of 1965 created opportunities that changed her family's trajectory from poverty to professional careers through access to public education and financial assistance programs.* The interconnectedness of government services and American life: The conversation concludes with Sarah's observation about how government services form an "ecosystem of opportunity" that impacts everything from education to outdoor recreation jobs in Montana, with each part connected to others in ways that aren't always visible but are essential to how society functions.Sarah Vowell is the New York Times bestselling author of seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. By examining the connections between the American past and present, she offers personal, often humorous accounts of American history as well as current events and politics. Her book, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, explores both the ideas and the battles of the American Revolution, especially the patriot founders' alliance with France as personified by the teenage volunteer in George Washington's army, the Marquis de Lafayette. Vowell's book, Unfamiliar Fishes is the intriguing history of our 50th state, Hawaii, annexed in 1898. Replete with a cast of beguiling and often tragic characters, including an overthrown Hawaiian queen, whalers, missionaries, sugar barons, Teddy Roosevelt and assorted con men, Unfamiliar Fishes is another history lesson in Americana as only Vowell can tell it – with brainy wit and droll humor. The Wordy Shipmates examines the New England Puritans and their journey to and impact on America. She studies John Winthrop's 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” and the bloody story that resulted from American exceptionalism. And she also traces the relationship of Winthrop, Massachusetts' first governor, and Roger Williams, the Calvinist minister who founded Rhode Island – an unlikely friendship that was emblematic of the polar extremes of the American foundation. Throughout she reveals how American history can show up in the most unexpected places in our modern culture, often in poignant ways. Her book Assassination Vacation is a haunting and surprisingly hilarious road trip to tourist sites devoted to the murders of presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Vowell examines what these acts of political violence reveal about our national character and our contemporary society. She is also the author of two essay collections, The Partly Cloudy Patriot and Take the Cannoli. Her first book Radio On, is her year-long diary of listening to the radio in 1995. She was guest editor for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. Most recently she contributed an essay for Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis (Riverhead, March 18, 2025). Vowell's thirty years as a journalist and columnist began in the freewheeling atmosphere of the weekly newspapers of the 1990s, including The Village Voice, the Twin Cities' City Pages and San Francisco Weekly, where she was the pop music columnist. An original contributor to McSweeney's, she has worked as a columnist for Salon and Time, a reviewer for Spin, a reporter for GQ, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, where she covered politics, history, education and life in Montana. She was a contributing editor for the public radio show This American Life from 1996-2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries and toured the country in many of the program's live shows. Her notable side projects have included a decade as the founding president of 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring and writing center for students aged 6-18 in Brooklyn; producing a filmed oral history series commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Montana Constitutional Convention of 1972; and occasional voice acting, including her role as teen superhero Violet Parr in Brad Bird's Academy Award-winning The Incredibles, and its sequel, Incredibles 2, from Pixar Animation Studios.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

As MAGA continues to vandalize the Federal bureaucracy, some progressives are beginning to publicly acknowledge their role in the historic undermining of the US government. In his provocative new book Why Nothing Works, the self-styled “progressive” Marc Dunkelman argues that it was the left - in their cultural aversion to power over the last half century - who have broken the U.S. government. If progressives want to get something…. anything, in fact, done in America - from building high speed railways to more affordable housing - Dunkelman argues that the Democrats need to once again embrace positive government. Don't blame Trump for Musk's chainsaw, Dunkelman tells the Democrats. Blame yourselves.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in this conversation with Dunkelman:* The Progressive Dilemma: Progressivism has two competing impulses that need to be in balance - one that seeks to centralize power to accomplish major projects (the "Hamiltonian" approach), and another that is suspicious of centralized authority and seeks to distribute power (the "Jeffersonian" approach). Since the 1960s, the balance has shifted heavily toward suspicion of power.* Crisis of Effective Governance: The current system has so many checks and constraints that even widely supported public interest projects can't get off the ground. Dunkelman cites the Biden administration's EV charger initiative that produced only 58 chargers from $5 billion in funding due to regulatory barriers and implementation challenges.* Historical Shift in Progressive Attitude: The 1960s-70s marked a turning point when progressive attitudes shifted from trusting centralized authority to deep skepticism. Dunkelman points to figures like Robert Moses (exposed in "The Power Broker") and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley as embodying a form of centralized power that became viewed as problematic.* Political Consequences: This dysfunction in government has contributed to populist backlash, with voters supporting figures like Trump who promise to take a "sledgehammer" to institutions they see as failing. The inability to deliver visible results has undermined progressive credibility.* Path Forward: Progressives need to develop a new narrative focused on making government work effectively rather than just opposing power. Dunkelman suggests "permitting reform" and similar practical measures need to be central to the progressive agenda, rather than continuing the stale debate about moving left or right.Marc J. Dunkelman is a fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a former fellow at NYU's Marron Institute of Urban Management. During more than a decade working in politics, he worked for Democratic members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and as a senior fellow at the Clinton Foundation. The author of The Vanishing Neighbor, Dunkelman's work has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, and Politico. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The New York Times' David Enrich is one of America's most tenacious investigative journalists. So when he comes out with a book entitled Murder the Truth, we should take note. There's a campaign, Enrich warns, sometimes secret, sometimes open, to undermine the First Amendment and press freedom, thereby protecting the rich and powerful. Led by Clarence Thomas, Enrich explains, it's an attempt to call into question the 1964 Supreme Court's 1964 New York Times vs Sullivan decision on libel. Undermine this critical judgement on press freedom, Enrich warns, and the truth could, indeed, by murdered in the United States.Here are the five key take-aways in our conversation with David Enrich:* New York Times v. Sullivan is a crucial legal precedent for press freedom - This 1964 Supreme Court case established the "actual malice" standard that gives journalists protection when reporting on public figures, allowing them to make good-faith mistakes without facing ruinous litigation.* There's a coordinated effort to weaken press protections - Enrich describes a network of conservative lawyers, activists, judges, and wealthy individuals working to undermine New York Times v. Sullivan, with Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch already expressing interest in reconsidering the precedent.* Legal harassment is already silencing journalism - Even with current protections in place, powerful individuals and organizations are weaponizing defamation lawsuits to intimidate journalists, particularly affecting smaller, independent outlets that lack the resources to fight prolonged legal battles.* Media ownership is responding to political pressure - The conversation touches on how even billionaire media owners like Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) appear to be making editorial decisions based on fears of government retaliation under the Trump administration.* The threat to press freedom is incremental, not sudden - Enrich argues we may be at a pivotal moment where the campaign against press freedoms is moving from rhetoric to tangible action, comparing it to the "frog in boiling water" - a gradual process that may only be recognized in retrospect.David Enrich is the Finance Editor at The New York Times. He previously was an editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal in New York and London. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. David grew up in Lexington, Mass., and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He lives in New York with his wife and two sons.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Not everyone, especially mainstream Democrats, are going to agree with Jessica Pishko on this one. In Liberties, she argues that it was the Democrats who “built Trump's army”. It was Joe Biden, she claims, who built up the very law enforcement regime that Trump is now weaponizing. So, in Pishko's mind, the Democrats have as much responsibility for the Mad Max police state which Trump is now unleashing now on America.Here are the 5 takeaways in our conversation with Pishko:* Democrats invested in police despite lack of support: According to Pishko, Democrats under Biden significantly invested in law enforcement (adding 100,000 police officers), but this did not translate into police support for Democrats. She argues police overwhelmingly supported Trump in both elections despite these investments.* Police unions backed Trump: Police unions, which traditionally didn't endorse presidential candidates, explicitly supported Trump in his campaigns. Pishko finds this paradoxical since Republicans typically don't support unions, while Democrats (like Biden) protected police pensions and increased funding.* "Defund the police" aftermath: Pishko suggests the 2020 protests led to a backlash where police became more aligned with Trump. She argues Biden's attempt to distance himself from "defund the police" by increasing funding didn't win police support but may have alienated progressive supporters.* Reduced oversight under Trump: Pishko claims Trump has removed checks on police power, citing examples of him pardoning convicted police officers and ending Department of Justice investigations into police brutality. She believes oversight will now need to come from local and state levels.* Structural challenges to police reform: Pishko argues that the structure of policing itself resists reform, pointing to examples like the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department where, despite multiple oversight mechanisms, problems persist. She notes that Black officers are leaving the profession, suggesting systemic issues that individual "good officers" cannot overcome.Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer with a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA from Columbia University. She has been reporting on the criminal legal system for a decade, with a focus on the political power of sheriffs since 2016. In addition to her newsletter Posse Comitatus, her writings have been featured in The New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Appeal, Slate, and Democracy Docket. She has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Type Investigations and was a 2022 New America Fellow. A longtime Texas resident, she currently lives with her family in North Carolina.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

There's a story today about how a VR headset can make us more empathetic toward nature. But according to the Pacific Northwest based author and biologist Thor Hanson, no digital technology can ever replicate nature. Instead, he argues in his new book Close to Home, we humans are wired, so to speak, to appreciate the natureal world whether its on the Galapagos or in our local park. In fact, he told me in a windswept conversation he recorded outside his home on San Juan island, the wonders of nature are just acute outside our door, even if we live in Los Angeles or New York City. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Thor Hanson:1. Nature is accessible everywhere, not just in remote locations. Hanson emphasizes that meaningful connections with nature can be found right outside your door, even in highly urbanized environments like Los Angeles.2. Local nature connections provide emotional resilience against global environmental challenges. Hanson suggests that forming bonds with nearby natural spaces helps counterbalance feelings of helplessness about larger environmental crises.3. Scientific evidence confirms nature's positive impact on physical and mental health. Multiple studies show measurable benefits from nature exposure, including lower anxiety, reduced blood pressure, and faster recovery from illness.4. Children have a natural ability to observe and connect with nature that adults often lose. Kids see more details in nature because they haven't developed the sensory filters that adults use to block out environmental stimuli.5. Small-scale local conservation efforts can collectively make significant environmental impacts. Hanson shares examples like Switzerland's community pond-building initiative that successfully reversed amphibian population declines across an entire region.Author and biologist Thor Hanson is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Switzer Environmental Fellow, and winner of the John Burroughs Medal. His books include Close to Home, Buzz, The Triumph of Seeds, Feathers, Bartholomew Quill, The Impenetrable Forest, Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid, Star and the Maestro, and more.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

So what's the most revolutionary invention in the history of the American Republic? The internet, maybe? Or the electric bulb or the motor car? Perhaps. But according to the Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin, it might be the Franklin Stove, Benjamin Franklin's innovation which she claims in an eponymous new book, represents an unintentional American revolution. What's really important about the Franklin Stove, she explains, is that it democratized heating, thereby enabling ordinary Americans to survive the “Little Ice Age” of the late 18th century. In an 21st century America where research into global warming is now under threat, Chaplin's intriguing The Franklin Stove is a convincing argument for the popular benefits of environmental science.Here the 5 Keen On America takeaways in our conversation with Joyce Chaplin* Franklin as a climate scientist: Chaplin reveals how Benjamin Franklin's work with his stove led him to understand atmospheric convection, which he then applied to explain larger climate systems like storm movements and the Gulf Stream. He essentially became an early climate scientist through his practical inventions.* The Little Ice Age context: Franklin invented his stove during the Little Ice Age (1300-1850), particularly in response to the severe winter of 1740-41. Unlike today's climate crisis, there was virtually no "denialism" about climate change during this period - people openly discussed and sought solutions to the cooling climate.* Franklin's environmental legacy: While Franklin initially created his stove to conserve wood and trees in Pennsylvania, his later models burned coal. This shift toward fossil fuels contributed to what Chaplin calls "an unintended industrial revolution" that ultimately led to our current climate warming crisis.* Franklin's political evolution: Though a monarchist for most of his life, Franklin underwent a radical transformation later in life, becoming head of Pennsylvania's abolition society after having previously owned enslaved people. This challenges the notion that historical figures were simply "products of their time."* Franklin's complex character: Chaplin, who has written extensively on Benjamin Franklin, portrays him as a self-cultivating narcissist who carefully crafted his public image and desperately sought fame from a young age. However, she acknowledges his genuine accomplishments and contributions to science and society, creating a more nuanced view of the founding father.Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, where she also holds affiliations with the Graduate School of Design and Center for the Environment. She is the author of The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius, among other books, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the London Review of Books. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Award-winning reporter Kevin Fagan is one of San Francisco's great treasures. In his much acclaimed new book, The Lost and Found, Fagan tells his his two-decade experience reporting about homelessness in San Francisco. He shares the stories of Tyson and Rita, two homeless individuals who he helped reconnect with their families. Tyson, despite having a supportive family, died of a fentanyl overdose, while Rita was rescued by her family and lived 20 more fulfilling years. Fagan, who experienced housing insecurity as a teenager, explains that homelessness stems from systemic poverty issues rather than personal failings. He notes that despite San Francisco's reputation as America's “homeless central”, 70% of its homeless population lost their homes while already living there.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our conversation with Fagan:* Personal connection to homelessness shapes Fagan's perspective - his own experience with housing insecurity as a youth gives him unique insight and empathy toward homeless individuals.* Homelessness is not simply a choice - Fagan emphasizes that "no one wants to be homeless" and many fall into homelessness through a combination of trauma, mental illness, addiction, and economic factors.* Family intervention can be transformative - Rita's story demonstrates how family reconnection (which inspired San Francisco's "Homeward Bound" program) can successfully help people exit homelessness.* San Francisco's homeless reputation is somewhat misunderstood - despite being known as "Homeless Central," about 70% of San Francisco's homeless population became homeless while already living in the city.* Solutions require addressing systemic poverty - Fagan argues that homelessness is fundamentally a poverty problem in America, requiring broader economic solutions beyond what individual cities can accomplish alone.Kevin Fagan is a longtime, award-winning reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, specializing in homelessness, enterprise news-feature writing, breaking news and crime. He has ridden with the rails with modern-day hobos, witnessed seven prison executions, written extensively about serial killers including the Unabomber, Doodler and Zodiac, and covered disasters ranging from the Sept. 11 terror attacks at Ground Zero to California's devastating wildfires. Homelessness remains a core focus of his, close to his heart as a journalist who cares passionately about the human condition. His book on the rescue of two homeless people, “The Lost and The Found,” is available everywhere books are sold.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, host Andrew Keen sits down with Francis Fukuyama to explore the concept of trust. Fukuyama defines it as a byproduct of virtuous behaviors like reliability, truthfulness, transparency, and keeping commitments. He describes trust as a crucial "lubricant" for social interactions and distinguishes between interpersonal and institutional trust, both of which are built through experiences of reliability and can be eroded by betrayal and disappointment. Fukuyama discusses how trust originates within families and extends to broader social circles. He also examines the global decline in trust over the past 30 years, attributing it to several key factors: the rise of technology and anonymous online interactions, higher education fostering more critical thinking, increased transparency exposing institutional failures, and growing political polarization reinforcing tribal identitities. Connecting trust to his earlier work on "the struggle for recognition, " he argues that as liberal democracies secure equal rights, individuals increasingly seek recognition for specific identities - such as religion, ethnicity, or gender - which can contribute to societal fragmentation. To address this decline, Fukuyama emphasizes the importance of governments reliably delivering on promises and providing expected services. However, he acknowledges that while competent governance is essential, it alone may not be enough to fully restore trust in institutions and society.

What do Fareed Zakaria, Nikki Haley, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Vinod Khosla and Kamala Harris all have in common? They are all, of course, highly successful Americans of Indian descent. According Meenakshi Ahamed, author of Indian Genius, one reason for what she calls the “meteoric rise” of Indians in America are their humble beginnings here. Arriving with minimal resources (what she calls the "$8 club"), Ahamed attributes their success to "jugaad" (resourcefulness), competitive spirit, family values, and an emphasis on education. She notes Indians are America's fastest-growing immigrant group, with traditionally Democratic voting patterns, though a 10% shift toward Republicans occurred in recent elections. So what are the chances that Trump will read Indian Genius to understand the upside of immigration to America? Less than zero, of course. 5 Key Takeaways * Successful Immigration Counter-Narrative: Ahamed's book presents a counter-narrative to anti-immigrant rhetoric, showcasing how Indian Americans have made significant contributions to American society, particularly in medicine, technology, and business.* The "$8 Club" Phenomenon: Many successful Indian immigrants came to America with extremely limited resources (just $8 due to India's currency restrictions) yet achieved remarkable success through determination, education, and hard work.* "Jugaad" Mindset: Ahamed attributes much of Indian immigrants' success to "jugaad" - a resourcefulness and ability to create something from nothing, developed in India's competitive environment where people must constantly find ways to get ahead.* Generational and Class Dynamics: Earlier Indian immigrants (1965-2010) typically came from upper castes with access to education, though this is changing. Additionally, Ahamed notes differences between first-generation immigrants like Vinod Khosla and later arrivals like Nadella and Pichai.* Shifting Political Allegiances: While Indian Americans traditionally voted 75% Democratic, Ahamed notes a recent 10% shift toward Republicans, particularly among younger Indian American men born in the US, reflecting broader demographic voting patterns.Meenakshi Ahamed was born in 1954 in Calcutta, India. After finishing school in India, she obtained an MA from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1978. She has had a varied career as a journalist, and prior to that, as a development consultant. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, as well as for the Ashoka Society. In 1989, she moved to London and became the foreign correspondent for New Delhi Television (NDTV). After returning to the United States in 1996, she worked as a freelance journalist. Her op-eds and articles have been published in the Asian Age, Seminar, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She has served on the board of Doctors Without Borders, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, and Drugs for Neglected Diseases. She divides her time between the United States and India.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

America, to borrow a word from last week's guest Yoni Appelbaum, is “stuck”. And so the American Dream, for most stuck Americans, is dead. Our guest today, the social entrepreneur Nicholas Lalla, agrees with Appelbaum. The American Dream might still be alive in privileged coastal communities, Lalla argues in his new book Reinventing the Heartland, but it needs resurrection elsewhere. Defining the American Dream as doing better than one's parents and having financial security, Lalla highlights Tulsa, Oklahoma as a model for mid-sized cities seeking economic revival through tech-focused development. Rather than emulating Silicon Valley, he advocates for cities finding their own "tech niche" based on local strengths. Tulsa's success comes from strategic investments, Lalla explains, the "Tulsa Remote" program offering $10,000 incentives to relocate, and comprehensive community development initiatives.Here are the 5 Keen on America takeaways from our conversation with Lalla:* The American Dream is geographically divided - Lalla believes the American Dream is thriving mainly in coastal tech hubs but fading in heartland communities, creating economic anxiety and social division.* Cities need to find their "tech niche" - Rather than trying to replicate Silicon Valley, mid-sized cities should identify and invest in specific tech sectors that build on their existing strengths and legacy industries.* Tulsa's model is working - Through strategic investments and initiatives like Tulsa Remote ($10,000 relocation incentives), Tulsa has successfully attracted tech talent and is on track to create 20,000 tech jobs over the next decade.* Local investment trumps waiting for government aid - Tulsa's transformation began with local philanthropic funding (particularly from the George Kaiser Family Foundation) before attracting corporate and federal investment.* Mid-sized cities offer competitive advantages - Despite lacking some big-city amenities, places like Tulsa provide benefits including lower cost of living, homeownership opportunities, outdoor activities, and the chance to participate in meaningful community development.NICHOLAS LALLA is an urbanist and social entrepreneur, working at the intersection of economic development and emerging technology. He is the author of Reinventing the Heartland, forthcoming from HarperCollins in March 2025. Lalla founded Tulsa Innovation Labs, an organization deploying over $200 million to build northeast Oklahoma's innovation economy. He previously led Cyber NYC for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a cybersecurity initiative The New York Times called “among the nation's most ambitious…” Earlier in his career, at the Urban Land Institute, he launched a national resilience program for cities combatting the effects of climate change. Lalla has written for Newsweek, Fast Company, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Next City, among other outlets. He can be found online at nicholaslalla.com.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

What one word describes how Donald Trump thinks about the world? According to both the Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch and UC Irvine professor Jeffrey Kopstein, that word is “patrimonialism” - a rather stodgy sociological term meaning that Trump wants to be the Godfather. Everything under Trump is personal, Rauch and Kopstein explain. Thus, for example, his public bullying of Zelenskyy and his vindictive announcement today of “pausing” military aid to Ukraine. The personal is the political used to be a rallying cry of the counterculture. With Trump, according to Rauch and Kopstein, the political is, by definition, personal. The public realm no long exists. And so Trump's patrimonial ideology means that holding political power requires him to be The Godfather. The only question is whether that means becoming Don Corleone or Marlon Brando. I suspect both.Here are the 5 Keen on America takeaways from our conversation with Rauch and Kopstein:* Patrimonialism as Trump's governing model: The experts argue that Trump is implementing a patrimonial system of government where the state is treated as his personal property and family business. Loyalty to Trump as an individual supersedes institutional structures and processes, similar to how a mafia boss operates.* The systematic dismantling of bureaucracy: According to Kopstein and Rauch, the current administration is in a "demolition phase" where Trump and allies like Elon Musk are working to dismantle the modern bureaucratic state. This isn't simply about reducing government size but about replacing merit-based systems with personal loyalty networks.* The corruption inherent in patrimonial systems: In patrimonial systems, the distinction between public and private resources becomes blurred. The experts suggest that what we would call corruption (using public office for private gain) becomes normalized as the ruler sees state resources as personal property.* Cultural reaction against modernity: Kopstein argues there's a cultural dimension to this shift, with Trump's patrimonialism appealing to those uncomfortable with rapid social changes in modern society, particularly around issues of gender, sexuality, and cultural diversity.* The strategy for opposition: Rauch suggests that opponents should focus on exposing corruption as the most effective strategy against patrimonial systems. In the longer term, they argue for demonstrating how effective government bureaucracies actually benefit citizens' daily lives and for developing better policy ideas.Jonathan Rauch is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. His latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, was published in January 2025.Jeffrey Kopstein is Dean's Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. In his research, Professor Kopstein focuses on interethnic violence, voting patterns of minority groups, antisemitism, and anti-liberal tendencies in civil society. These interests are central topics in his latest books, Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2018), Politics, Memory, Violence: The New Social Science of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2023), and The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future (Polity, 2024).Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The international war reporter John Lechner is a brave man. For his new book Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare, he spent time in both Russia and the Central African Republic researching the Russian mercenary Wagner Group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin. In our conversation, he details Prigozhin's rise, his rebellion against Putin, and his eventual death. Lechner argues that mercenary groups like Wagner are generally no more or less bloodthirsty than the governments that employ them. We also talked about the broader global trend of outsourcing warfare, from Russian mercenaries to U.S. contractors like Blackwater, and how this approach reduces political costs for governments engaging in military interventions.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from the Lechner interview:* Wagner Group represents a broader trend of privatized warfare, following in the footsteps of Western contractors like Blackwater but expanding into offensive operations.* Yevgeny Prigozhin's personal ambition and desire to overcome his status within Putin's inner circle drove Wagner's expansion globally.* Mercenary groups like Wagner typically mirror the human rights practices of the governments that hire them, often exacerbating existing abuses rather than introducing new ones.* Prigozhin's rebellion against Putin stemmed from his narcissism and fear of losing political leverage when the Ministry of Defense attempted to absorb Wagner's fighters.* The outsourcing of warfare (through mercenaries, proxies, or technology) allows governments to pursue interventionist policies with reduced political costs, as contractor deaths don't receive the same public scrutiny as military casualties.John Lechner graduated from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) Program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. At Georgetown, John focused on security issues in Central Africa and the Sahel; Turkey; Russia, and the former Soviet Union. He is an expert on Russia's growing influence in Africa. He speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central African Republic). After working in finance for several years, John decided to leverage his language skills and significant experience living abroad—especially in Russia and Europe—for a career in international affairs. After arriving in Washington DC, he took an internship with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), analyzing and publishing articles on Turkish domestic politics, security, and foreign relations. While attending Georgetown he has continued to work as a freelance journalist, covering issues related to language, history, culture, and politics in eastern Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey, the Sahel, and the Central African Republic. He is an expert on the history, languages, and politics of Central Africa, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union. You can find his articles published in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Kyiv Post, The Diplomat, Africa is a Country, African Arguments, The National Interest, and Defense One, among others.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Should lawyers, home alarm fitters, hairdressers and plumbers all have to get a license to do their business? And what about dog walkers and surgeons? It's an absurd question, of course, but as Rebecca Haw Allensworth reveals in her new book, The Licensing Racket, we live in absurdly credentialed times. As Allensworth notes, at a moment in history when AI is about to replace many professional workers with bots, there really are required licenses for “trades” like home alarm fitters. And what about podcasters? Should amateurs like myself have to get a professional license to broadcast conversations with experts like Rebecca Haw Allensworth?Here are the 5 KEEN-ON takeaways from our conversation with Allensworth:* Licensing as exclusion rather than protection: Allensworth argues that many professional licensing requirements serve more to restrict entry to professions and maintain high prices than to actually protect the public.* Self-regulation creates conflicts of interest: Licensing boards are typically composed of professionals from the industry they regulate, creating inherent conflicts where they prioritize their profession's interests over public protection.* Appropriate vs. excessive licensing: While Allensworth supports licensing for complex and dangerous professions (doctors, lawyers, pilots), she criticizes excessive requirements for jobs like hairstyling, which requires as many educational hours as law school.* Regulatory failure in healthcare: The licensing system contributes to America's healthcare problems by increasing costs and creating scarcity, while simultaneously failing to effectively discipline dangerous practitioners (as seen in the opioid crisis).* Alternative approaches to professionalism: Professionalism doesn't necessarily require "closure" (restricting who can enter). Certification systems that signal quality without prohibiting practice may be more effective than licensing for many occupations.Rebecca Haw Allensworth is a Associate Dean for Research and holds the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law at Vanderbilt Law School. She studies antitrust and professional licensing. Her work on antitrust focuses on how to adapt competition policy to address competition problems posed by tech platforms and her research on professional licensing explores how lawmakers should balance the need for expertise in regulating the professions with the problems that can arise from self-regulation. She is the author of The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work and Why It Goes Wrong? (Harvard University Press, February 2025), a deep dive into the pathologies of professional licensing in America. Her article about medical licensing boards and unethical prescribers, “Licensed to Pill,” appeared in The New York Review of Books in July 2020. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and has received the thirteenth annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award for groundbreaking antitrust scholarship.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Not everyone sees Trump or Musk as an existential threat to the American federal bureaucracy. In the March cover story of Harper's, their Washington DC editor Andrew Cockburn argues that this latest war against the American state is “futile”. He expresses skepticism that DOGE's efforts to dismantle the Federal will succeed, suggesting courts will likely block them as they did during Trump's first term. He predicts Musk's influence will diminish and that Trump will eventually sideline him. Cockburn also underlines the "contractor state" where much government work is already privatized, making structural change difficult. He criticizes Democrats for lacking energy and ideas, and suggests they need to disconnect from corporate interests and address issues like housing affordability and insurance costs to reconnect with voters.Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Andrew Cockburn:* Cockburn believes Trump's attempts to dismantle the federal bureaucracy will likely fail, as the courts and bureaucratic resistance will eventually prevail, just as they did during his first term.* He predicts Elon Musk's influence in the administration will be temporary, with Trump eventually sidelining him as other courtiers like Kash Patel assert their authority.* The "contractor state" (privatized government functions) makes structural reform difficult, as contracts can't be easily canceled without legal challenges.* Cockburn sees a fundamental crisis in the Democratic Party, describing a lack of energy and clear ideas at their recent convention, with leadership disconnected from working-class concerns.* He suggests Democrats need to divorce themselves from corporate interests and address real issues affecting Americans, like unaffordable housing, exploitative insurance practices, and the impact of tech companies on local communities.Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic and the London Review of Books.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Given the shameful American sacrifice of Ukraine, there will be few timelier movies than Anna Kryvenko's upcoming “This House is Undamaged”,. It will be an Orwellian documentary examining the Russian destruction of Mariupol, the Ukrainian city devastated by Putin's invasion in 2022. Krivenko, a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, explains how Russian authorities are rapidly rebuilding and selling properties there while erasing Ukrainian history and creating the big lie of Mariupol as a historically Russian city. Kryvenko, originally from Kyiv, also discusses the parallels between Putin's and Trump's lies about Ukraine, summarizing their fundamental misrepresentation of the truth as a "carnival of hypocrisy."Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Kryvenko:* The Russians are engaged in a systematic erasure of Mariupol's Ukrainian identity, not just through physical reconstruction but through an aggressive propaganda campaign that claims the city was "always Russian." This reconstruction effort began shortly after the city's destruction in 2022.* Pre-war Mariupol was not characterized by deep Russian-Ukrainian divisions as Russian propaganda claims. According to Kryvenko, language differences weren't a source of conflict before political forces deliberately weaponized them.* The rebuilding of Mariupol has a dark commercial aspect - Russians are selling apartments in reconstructed buildings, sometimes in properties where the original Ukrainian owners were killed, and marketing them as vacation properties while ignoring the city's tragic recent history.* There's a humanitarian crisis unfolding as some Ukrainians are being forced to return to occupied Mariupol because they have nowhere else to live, with Kryvenko citing statistics that around 150,000 people returned to occupied territories by the end of 2024.* The filmmaker is using a unique methodology of gathering evidence through social media content, vlogs, and propaganda materials to document both the physical transformation of the city and the narrative being constructed around it, rather than traditional documentary filming techniques.Transcript of Anna Kryvenko InterviewAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. As the situation in Ukraine becomes more absurd, it seems as if the lies of Donald Trump and the lies of Vladimir Putin are becoming increasingly similar. Trump has been talking about Zelensky and Ukraine, what is described as a barrage of lies. As CNN reports, Trump falsely called Zelensky a dictator. It's becoming more and more absurd. It's almost as if the whole script was written by some Central European or East Central European absurdist. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to lie as well. There was an interesting piece recently in the Wall Street Journal about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past. My guest today, Anna Kryvenko, is a filmmaker. She's the director of an important new movie in the process of being made called "This House Is Undamaged." She's a visual fellow at the Central European University, and she's joining us from Budapest today. Congratulations on "This House is Undamaged." Before we talk specifically about the film, do you agree with my observations that there seems to be an increasingly eerie synergy between the lies coming out of Washington, D.C. and Moscow, between Trump and Putin?Anna Kryvenko: I think the situation is becoming more crazy and absurd. That's a better word to use in this situation. For me, all of this looks like some carnival of hypocrisy. It's unbelievable that someone can use the word "dictator" in comparison with Vladimir Putin or speaking about this 4% of the people who support Zelensky when he says it's only four persons. It looks completely absurd. And this information comes from Moscow, not from actual Ukrainian statistics.Andrew Keen: The phrase you use "carnival of hypocrisy" I think is a good description. I might even use that in the title of this conversation. It's almost as if Trump in particular is parodying himself, but he seems so separated from reality that it seems as if he's actually being serious, at least from my position in California. How does it look from your perspective in Budapest? You're originally from Ukraine, so obviously you have a particular interest in this situation.Anna Kryvenko: I don't even know what to think because it's changing so fast into absurd situations. Every day when I open the news, I'm speaking with people and it looks like some kind of farce. You're expecting that the next day someone will tell you that this is a joke or something, but it's not. It's really hard to believe that this is reality now, but unfortunately it is.Andrew Keen: Kundera wrote his famous novel "The Joke" as a parody of the previous authoritarian regime in Central Europe. Your new movie, "This House is Undamaged" - I know you are an artist in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University - is very much in that vein. Tell us about the project.Anna Kryvenko: We're in work in progress. I was doing research in the archives and internet archives. This documentary film will explore the transformation of Mariupol, a Ukrainian city that was destroyed by the Russian invasion in 2022. I will use only archives and found footage materials from people who are in Mariupol now, or who were in Mariupol at the time of invasion, who were actually trying to film what's going on. Sometimes I'll also use propaganda images from Russia, from Russian authorities. In May 2022, Mariupol, after intense fighting, was almost completely destroyed.Andrew Keen: Tell us the story of Mariupol, this town on the old border of Russia and Ukraine. It's in the southeast of Ukraine.Anna Kryvenko: It's on the shore of the Azov Sea. It's part of Donetsk region. It was always an industrial city, most known for the Azovstal factory. In 2022, after incredible brutality of Russian war against Ukraine, this strategically important city was almost completely destroyed in May 2022 and was occupied by Russian government. About 90% of buildings were destroyed or demolished in some way.Andrew Keen: The Russians have essentially leveled the town, perhaps in the same way as the Israelis have essentially destroyed Gaza.Anna Kryvenko: Exactly. For a lot of people, we have this image of destroyed Mariupol until today. But after these terrible events, the Russians started this big campaign to rebuild the city. Of course, we know it was done just to erase all the scars of war, to erase it from the city's history. They started the reconstruction. Some people who stayed in Mariupol thought they would have new housing since they had no place to live. But business is business - Russian authorities started to sell these apartments to Russian citizens.Andrew Keen: I'm surprised Trump hasn't got involved. Given his real estate background and his cozy relationship with Putin, maybe Trump real estate will start selling real estate in Mariupol.Anna Kryvenko: I was thinking the same thing this last week. It was looking like such an absurd situation with Mariupol. But now we are in this business mode again with Ukraine and all the minerals. It's only the economical part of war they look at.Andrew Keen: He probably would come up with some argument why he really owns Mariupol.Anna Kryvenko: Yes.Andrew Keen: Coming back to the Wall Street Journal piece about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past - you're originally from Kyiv. Is it the old East Central European business of destroying history and creating a new narrative that somehow conforms to how you want history to have been made?Anna Kryvenko: I was really shocked at how fast this idea of Russian Mariupol is repeating after two years in Russian media, official and semi-professional blogs, YouTube, and so forth. As a person working with this type of material, watching videos every day to find what I need, I'm listening to these people doing propaganda from Mariupol, saying "we are citizens of the city and it's always been Russian." They're repeating this all the time. Even when I'm hearing this - of course it was always a Ukrainian city, it's completely absurd, it's 100% disinformation. But when you're hearing this repeated in different contexts all the time, you start to think about it.Andrew Keen: It's the same tactics as Trump. If you keep saying something, however absurd it sounds or is, if you keep saying it enough times, some people at least start believing it. You're not a historian or political scientist, but Mariupol is in the part of Ukraine which had a significant population of Russian-speaking people. Some of the people that you're filming and featuring in your movie - are they Russians who have moved into Mariupol from some other part of Russia, or are they people originally from Mariupol who are somehow embracing their new Russian overlords?Anna Kryvenko: The people I'm watching on social media, most of them say they're from Mariupol. But you can find journalistic articles showing they're actually paid by the Russian government. It's paid propaganda and they're repeating the same narrative. It's important that they're always repeating "we were born in Mariupol" and "we want the city to be Russian." But of course, you can see it's from the same propaganda book as 2014 with Crimea. They're repeating the same narrative from Soviet times - they just changed "Soviet Union" to "Russia" and "the West" to "European Union."Andrew Keen: You grew up in Kyiv, so you're familiar with all these current and historical controversies. What's your take on Mariupol before 2020, before it was flattened by the Russians? Was it a town where Russian-speaking and Ukrainian people were neighbors and friends? Were there always deep divisions between the Russian and Ukrainian speaking populations there?Anna Kryvenko: It's hard to explain because you need to dig deeper to explain the Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking parts of Ukraine. But it was never a problem before Yanukovych became prime minister and then president. It was his strategy to create this polarization of Ukraine - that the western part wants to be part of the European Union and the eastern part wants to be part of Russia because of language, and they cannot live together. But it's not true. For me as a person from Kyiv, from the center of the country, with friends from different parts of Ukraine, it was never a problem. I'm from a Russian-speaking family and have many friends from Ukrainian-speaking families. It was never a question. We were in a kind of symbiotic connection. All schools were in Ukrainian, universities in Ukrainian. We were bilingual. It was not a problem to communicate.Some of this division came from Yanukovych's connections to Putin and his propaganda. It was important for them to say "we are Russian-speaking people, and because we are Russian-speaking, we want to be part of Russia." But I have friends from Mariupol, and after 2014, when war in eastern Ukraine started and Mariupol was bombed a few times, it became a really good city to live in. There were many cultural activities. I know friends who were originally from Mariupol, studied in Kyiv in theater or visual art, and went back to Mariupol because it was a good place for their art practice. Ukraine is still a bit centralized, with most activity in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and the big cities, but Mariupol wasn't a city with internal conflict. It's weird that so fast after 2022, people started saying it was always problematic in wanting to be part of Russia. It was never like that.Andrew Keen: It's as if I lived for a year in Bosnia before the civil war, and it was almost as if ethnicity was invented by the nationalist Serbian regime. It seems as if the Putin regime is doing or has done the same thing in the eastern part of Ukraine.Anna Kryvenko: Yes.Andrew Keen: You talk to lots of friends still and you're from Kyiv originally, and obviously your professional life remains focused on the situation. In late February 2025, what's your sense of how Ukrainians are feeling given what Trump is now saying?Anna Kryvenko: I think a lot of people in Ukraine or Ukrainians abroad are feeling lonely, that they don't have support. Again we are in this situation where you have big deals about Ukraine without Ukraine. You feel like nothing, just an empty space on a map with minerals or sea access. We're just sitting there waiting while they're agreeing on deals. That's the negative layer. But it's important for all Ukrainians to be together and speak about the situation. After Trump's words about the 4% support for Zelensky, there were statistics from last year showing 57-55% support for Zelensky. Today, after these few days, new statistics show 65% support.Andrew Keen: Zelensky started his political career as a satirical comedian, and it's as if he's participating in his own comedy - as if he's almost paid Trump to promote him. What about the broader take on the US? Obviously Trump isn't all America, but he was just elected a couple of months ago. Are your Ukrainian friends and associates, as well as many people at the Central European University in Budapest, taking this as a message from America itself, or are people able to separate Trump and America?Anna Kryvenko: This is a hard question because we always know that you have a president or representative figure, but that's not the whole state. I spoke with someone from our university who was in Pennsylvania before the election, and he said all the people were pro-Trump. The logic was really simple - "he's good" and "he will stop this war" - though people sometimes don't even know which war or which country. They're just repeating the same talking points.Andrew Keen: It's sort of Orwellian in the sense that it's just war and it doesn't really matter who's involved - he's just going to stop it.Anna Kryvenko: It reminded me of how everyone was repeating about Lukashenko from Belarus that "he's a good manager" and can manage things, and that's why he's still president - not that he's a dictator killing his opponents. They use this to explain why he's good and people choose him. Now with Trump, they say "he's a good businessman," but we can see how this business works. Today, someone from Trump's administration said Zelensky needs to stop being arrogant because Trump is in a bad mood. In what world are we living where this is used as an argument?Andrew Keen: Coming back to real estate, he probably sees Mariupol as a nice strip on the Black Sea, like Gaza, which he sees as a valuable strip on the Mediterranean for real estate development. I found an interesting piece online about the Russian invasion, "When Buildings Can Talk: The Real Face of Civilian Infrastructure Ruined by Russian Invaders." In a way, your project "This House is Undamaged" is your way of making buildings talk. Is that fair?Anna Kryvenko: I think it's the best description you can use.Andrew Keen: Perhaps you might explain how and why.Anna Kryvenko: This name "This House is Undamaged" might or might not be the final name. For me, it's important because after the first months when it started to be a Russian city, some people were trying to sell apartments just to have some money. The reconstruction started a bit later. They were using video websites like Craigslist. It immediately became Russian, part of Russian territory. People from different Russian regions who saw this opportunity were trying to buy something because prices were so cheap. People needed money to buy a ticket and go to other cities or to relatives. In every advertisement, there was this phrase "this house has no damages" or "this house is undamaged." You had to put it there even if it wasn't true - you could see pictures where one building had a hole, but they were still saying "this house is undamaged."Andrew Keen: It's just again coming back to the carnival of hypocrisy or the carnival of absurd hypocrisy - you see these completely destroyed homes, and then you have the signs from the Russians saying this house is undamaged.Anna Kryvenko: It was also interesting why some people from Russia want to buy apartments in Mariupol, in these reconstructed buildings with weird pro-Russian murals - it's like Stalinism. They don't even know where Mariupol is - they think it's somewhere near Crimea, but it's not the Black Sea, it's the Azov Sea, an industrial region. It's not the best place to live. But they think it will be some kind of resort. They're living somewhere in Russia and think they can buy a cheap apartment and use it as a resort for a few months. This is absurd because the city was completely destroyed. You still have mass graves. Sometimes they're selling apartments where they can't even find the owner because the whole family is dead.On Google Maps, someone made an alternative version where you can see all the buildings that were destroyed, because officially you can't find this information anywhere. People were putting crosses where they knew someone died in a building - entire families. And after this, people are buying their apartments. For me, this is unbearable. You can do research about what you're doing, but people are lazy and don't want to do this work.Andrew Keen: It comes back to the Journal piece about Russia literally erasing not just Ukraine's past but also its future, creating a culture of amnesia. It's chilling on so many levels. But it's the old game - it's happened before in that part of the world and no doubt will happen again. As a filmmaker, what particular kind of political or aesthetic responsibility do you have? People have been writing - I mentioned Kundera, Russian writers, Gogol - satires of this kind of absurd political power for centuries. But as a filmmaker, what kind of responsibility do you have? How does your form help you make this argument of essentially restoring the past, of telling the truth?Anna Kryvenko: A lot of filmmakers in Ukraine, with the start of invasion, just brought cameras and started making films. The first goal wasn't to make a film but to document the crimes. My case is different - not only because my family's in Ukraine and I have many friends there and lived there until my twenties. For the last ten years, since the Maidan events in 2013-2014, I started working with archive and found footage material. This is my methodology. For me, it's not important to go somewhere and document. It's more interesting to use media deconstruction from propaganda sources, maybe from Ukrainian sources also because it's a question of ideology.One of my favorite materials now is people doing vlogs - just with their camera or mobile phone going from Russia to Crimea or back. You only have two ways to go there because airports aren't working, so you go through the Kerch-Crimea bridge. Now because of Mariupol's strategic location, you can go through there, so you have two different roads. People from different Russian cities sometimes film their road and say "what is this, is it destroyed?" This is the average Russian person, and you can hear the propaganda they're repeating or what they're really thinking. For me, it's important to show these different points of view from people who were there or are there now. I don't have the opportunity as a Ukrainian citizen to go there. Through this method, in the near future when I finish this film, we can have testimonies from the inside. We don't need to wait for the war to end because we don't know how or when it ends. It's important to show it to people who maybe don't know anything about what's going on in Mariupol.Andrew Keen: Given the abundance of video on the internet, on platforms like YouTube, how do you distinguish between propaganda and truth yourself in terms of taking some of these segments to make your film? It could be conceivable that some of the more absurd videos are put out by Ukrainians to promote their own positions and undermine the Russians. Have you found that? Is there a propaganda war on YouTube and other platforms between Ukrainian and Russian nationalists? And as a filmmaker who's trying to archive the struggle in an honest way, how do you deal with that?Anna Kryvenko: Of course, there are many people, and Mariupol is the best example because the Russian government is paying people to repeat pro-Russian ideology. Sometimes you can see just an average person from Mariupol going with a camera and shooting something without speaking - this is just documentation. Sometimes you have Russian people there for some days just saying something. And of course, you get different segments of real propaganda from some ministry in Russia with drone material and big music. I'm always trying to question myself: What am I looking at? Who is speaking? On technical aspects, why is this like this? It helps me to be holistic.Of course, I'm from Ukraine, and sometimes this is the most uncomfortable - you can hear actual people from Mariupol saying something you don't want to hear because it's not your point of view on the war. But these are people really from the city giving some kind of realistic point of view on the situation. It's sad, but there were statistics at the end of 2024 that about 150,000 people were returning to occupied territories, not only to Mariupol but all occupied territories. Maybe 40% were coming back to register their property and then returning to Ukrainian territory, but many people are returning to Mariupol because they don't have anywhere to live in Ukraine. It's not hundreds but thousands of people. As Ukrainians, we're not comfortable with this because we're all in different situations. But if something's not comfortable for my point of view, it doesn't mean it's bad or good.Andrew Keen: It's an important project. I know your artist residency at the Central European University is finishing at the end of February. You're going to focus on finishing the movie. When do you think it will be ready and what are your ambitions for the finished movie? Will you put it online, in theaters? What's your ideal?Anna Kryvenko: If everything goes well, we can finish it in a year and a half because it will be a long process of editing and working with rights. We only started working on it six months ago, and it's starting to go faster. Documentary making is a long process because of funding and everything. Even though I don't need to go somewhere physically, it's still a long process with a lot of waiting. First, we're thinking about festivals, maybe a theater release, maybe we'll have some broadcasters because it's an important topic to show to a wider audience. After a year, we'll see.Andrew Keen: If "Buildings Can Talk" is the subtitle of this upcoming movie "This House is Undamaged," it's a really important project about Mariupol. Thank you for being on the show. I'm going to have to get you back when the movie is done because I can't wait to see it.Anna Kryvenko: Thank you so much. Thank you.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Anna Kryvenko (1986, Ukraine) is a video and fine art photography artist based in Prague and Kyiv. She is a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at Central European University. She graduated from the Centre for Audio-Visual Studies at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU, Prague). Her films and performances were screened at Dok Leipzig, ZagrebDox, Visions du Reel Nyon, Fluidum Festival, Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, etc. With her found-footage film Silently Like a Comet, she won the prize for the Best Experimental Act at FAMUFEST, Prague (CZ), and a few others. Her film Listen to the Horizon won the prize for the Best Czech Experimental Documentary, Jihlava IDFF (CZ). Her first feature documentary film My Unknown Soldier won the Last Stop Trieste 2018 Postproduction Award, Special Mention at Zagreb Dox, the Special Prize of the Jury at IDFF CRONOGRAF, and the Andrej Stankovič Prize. Her newest short film Easier Than You Think won the Jury Award of the Other Vision Competition 2022 (PAF, Czech Republic).Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Lots of healthy disagreement in this week's THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show with Keith Teare. We debate the impact of AI on coding jobs, with Keith suggesting that while traditional coding skills may become less important, system architecture and AI guidance skills will be crucial to maintaining the value of human labor. We also discuss the rise of early-stage unicorns, military-tech AI start-ups, and disagree strongly on the status of billionaires, with Keith arguing that it's “not hard” to be a billionaire in Silicon Valley today. Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from today's conversation:* Divergent Market and Valley Sentiment: While the stock market is having its worst performance since Trump's inauguration, Silicon Valley remains optimistic, particularly about AI. Keith argues there's no short-term correlation between Silicon Valley sentiment and market performance.* Evolution of Tech Skills: The rise of AI is changing the nature of technical skills needed in startups. Keith suggests that traditional coding skills are becoming less crucial, while the ability to architect systems and guide AI is becoming more important. He notes that universities are already adapting their computer science programs to include AI.* Rise of Efficient Startups: AI is enabling lean startups to do more with fewer people. Keith uses his own company Signal Rank as an example, noting they've built a complex system with just five people, two of whom are coders, highlighting a shift in how startups can be built efficiently.* Military-Tech Convergence: There's a growing trend of Silicon Valley companies entering the defense sector, exemplified by Saronic raising $600 million for autonomous warships. This represents a broader shift in how military technology is being developed and funded through private companies.* Debate about Wealth Creation: The conversation concludes with a debate about wealth accumulation, sparked by Robert Reich's controversial X post about billionaires. Keith argues that technology's global reach and distribution capabilities have made it easier than ever to build valuable companies, with Andrew strongly disputing the idea that becoming a billionaire is "not that hard."That Was The Week - February 22, 2025With Andrew Keen and Keith TeareAndrew Keen: Hello everybody. It is Saturday, February the 22nd, 2025. The last Saturday in February, the last Saturday we're going to do That Was The Week tech roundup. It's been an odd week. On the one hand, the stocks notched the worst week since Trump's inauguration six weeks ago. It's been a long six weeks. According to the Financial Times, the geopolitical rupture, which of course has been caused by Trump, has sparked a quiet market rebellion. Niall Ferguson had an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the demise of the United States because of its massive debt, and Elon Musk has been continuing to make a public fool of himself this week, waving a chainsaw and pretending to be an Argentine politician, which I'm not sure reflects that well on him. However, in spite of all that bad news, Keith Teare's That Was The Week newsletter is actually very optimistic. Unicorns are back, according to Keith, and we have an image, of course, created by AI of these imaginary beasts horses with horns. Keith is joining us, as always, from Palo Alto, the home of optimism. Keith, do you think it's coincidental that suddenly everyone is optimistic again in Silicon Valley whilst the market is sliding to those two things in an odd way, kind of go together?Keith Teare: There's no correlation between Silicon Valley and the markets at all in any day to day sense. There's long term correlation, but not short term. Silicon Valley is having a moment because of AI, and Grok Three was launched this week. Crunchbase launched its new AI driven data platform, and the CEO declared that historical data is dead, meaning only future predictive data is any good anymore.Andrew Keen: And historical data being dead. The future is predictive intelligence. What does that mean?Keith Teare: He means that it's now possible, because of AI, to see patterns and trends and predict them. Just knowing the past is not the point anymore. Obviously it's stretching a point. You still need the history from the past to see the trends. But he's saying the needle has turned from looking backwards to predicting the future because of data. That's true in biology as well. There's a massive arc this week announced a new model that understands DNA and can predict the likelihood of solving diseases.Andrew Keen: Your editorial this week, Keith, is quite personal. You know that as the person in charge of Signal Rank, your startup, AI has been remarkably helpful in it. You refer in the editorial to an interesting piece in the New York Times about how AI is changing Silicon Valley build startups like your own Signal. What does your experience at Signal Rank tell us about the future of startups?Keith Teare: Signal Rank is five people. Two of us have coding skills. We've raised $5 million ever to spend on building Signal. All the other money we raised is to invest in companies. That article is focusing on the fact that it's almost like the Lean Startup story from the early 2000s, except it's true this time, because the most expensive thing in a startup is people. And the one thing you need less of is people. That's a massive shift. Of course, if you're building large language models, the opposite is true, because the most expensive thing is GPUs, which you pay Nvidia for. And that's super expensive. But everything else that's sitting on top of that is getting faster, cheaper and better.Andrew Keen: You also refer to a New York Times piece about how AI is prompting an evolution, not an extinction for coders. Your son's a coder, in a sense, you're a coder. Ultimately, one and I was at this thing with Tim Draper a couple of weeks ago where he was talking about companies, billion dollar companies built and managed by single people won't ultimately make most coders extinct. Maybe not all. But when founders like yourselves simply become coders and you won't have the need for other help.Keith Teare: I make the point in an editorial that I didn't write a single line of code, but I've built a very complex system with lots of AI agents working together and delivering results for users. Learning to code is going to be a low requirement. A very high requirement is learning to architect and guide the AI because the AI can code, but it can't imagine systems to build or know when it got it right or when it got it wrong. The skill base is going to shift to what normally would be the domain of a product manager who has coding skills and can understand what's happening and can understand what it can ask for and what it can't ask for. But coding itself, learning Python, learning JavaScript or Java? Probably less essential.Andrew Keen: So what happens to kids like your son who just graduated and now works in Silicon Valley as a coder?Keith Teare: He'll still be needed for some time. In his company, they're not allowed to use AI yet. It's a little bit like dying skills always protect themselves until they can't. Engineers that are defensive or companies that are defensive about using AI are going to fall behind a little bit. But eventually everyone gets there because it's just a better way of doing things.Andrew Keen: You're an innovator and instinctive in terms of innovation. But are people going to start going to college and doing majors and working with AI rather than learning how to code? Will computer science be really about how to ask the right questions and ask it to do the correct things?Keith Teare: Yes, but to do that you need to understand systems architecture. My youngest son just got an offer from my old university in the UK, Kent, and it's for a course called Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, so they're already evolving the courses to teach the new skills. I think it's going to be imperative if you can talk to a machine and you can imagine what you want it to build. Imagine you could describe to a machine the website you'd really like for Keen on America, and it would build it, and then you'd look at what it built and say, no, I didn't mean that, I meant this. It gives you massive power to produce things.Andrew Keen: And I think it's also true with writers. I'm not a coder. But the thing with AI is it's not designed to replicate human writing. It's designed to answer questions and organize ideas in ways that are instant as opposed to taking hours or days for humans. So it's similar in that sense. Meanwhile, let's go back to your unicorns. It's all coming out of Crunchbase that your wife works for. She writes for it. And what is Crunchbase telling us this week about quote unquote minting early stage startups? Are unicorns back in fashion? We haven't talked about unicorns for about a year. We talk about them every week.Keith Teare: The rates of unicorn production declined massively from 2021 onwards and reached the bottom last year.Andrew Keen: While the market was strong and now it's falling and unicorns are back.Keith Teare: This article is specifically about early stage unicorns. These are unicorns that become unicorns at a series A or a series B round. They're raising very large sums of money. The top six series A raises this week all raised more than $50 million.Andrew Keen: And the average valuation I guess early round has jumped to 3.3 billion. But doesn't the unicorn term become slightly absurd if you're raising hundreds of millions of dollars? It's given that you're going to be a unicorn. But does that really mean anything?Keith Teare: If you try to put it into a rational framework, the amount of money put into a company and the valuation is determined by supply and demand and likely outcomes. Investors who are writing these checks are making a calculation of what this company will be worth in the next five to ten years. They're writing checks appropriate to a gain of at least ten times that money. They're projecting into the future a likely outcome from writing the checks and the competition to invest in these companies is so intense that the checks get bigger earlier. Obviously that creates risk. The risk is that you're making the call too early and you're going to be wrong in your predictions. The upside is that you know you're right and you'll be smiling all the way to the bank. That's just the nature of any technology transfer.Andrew Keen: Is this different from any other hysteria boom? Just the numbers are larger. Is this different from the dot-com boom where huge amounts of money were poured in? Most companies failed. Some succeeded, like Amazon or like web 2.0, or like social media or like crypto.Keith Teare: It's very similar. It's more like the gold rush because there really was gold. There really is gold. Even in the dot-com boom, the asset class of venture capital did very well. Individual investments failed, but the asset class as a whole did very well. When you allocate to a tech boom like AI really is and the AI boom is real, there's real value being produced and real change in human experience that's going to generate lots of money. Placing those bets at the asset class level makes sense. Individual investments is a totally different story.Andrew Keen: You also refer to Hunter Walk, who is a very smart guy. He said, you have to assume every company will have access to the same LLMs and voices. The challenge then is to build a company that thrives despite this reality. Given the commodification of AI and all these platforms from xAI to OpenAI to Anthropic AI to Google Gemini, that are basically now all the same. We're seeing this commodification of LLMs. Doesn't that point to a weakness in this AI hysteria?Keith Teare: You have to distinguish between LLMs, reasoning agents and agents that can do things. This week, Grok Three was launched. It's very good, by the way. But it's only a little bit better than all the others. So it didn't get the attention that say deepfaked.Andrew Keen: And next week someone will come out with something else that will be a little better. And as this race continues, the differences between the products will become less and less.Keith Teare: But for you and me, that's fantastic. You use Anthropic, I use Perplexity, I use Claude, we're basically getting free intelligence to do work.Andrew Keen: I wonder whether in that sense it's rather like the early days of the internet where we got a lot of stuff for free, and then everyone woke up and started charging. I mean, we are paying. I pay my $20 a month to Anthropic. You pay your monthly fees, but it's still pretty small amounts of money.Keith Teare: OpenAI now has 400 million daily active users and is making billions of dollars.Andrew Keen: I hope so because it's raised tens of billions of dollars.Keith Teare: But that is the game. Think of the Andrew Keen world. You wouldn't want to constrain yourself to investing almost nothing and making almost nothing. You want to invest as much as possible as long as you know you can make more than that back.Andrew Keen: On the unicorn front, you've been at this rodeo before many times. You're about as experienced as it gets. Are you taking these arguments about unicorns seriously, or should we be taking them like unicorns themselves with a pinch of salt?Keith Teare: When you build startups, the valuation of the startup is not even in your mind as a variable. You're just building whatever your vision is and it costs money to build it. So you're raising money. You sell shares in your company at the highest price you possibly can. It's good news if you're a unicorn from the point of view of the company you're building. Founders don't really think about valuations as much as they think about how much money they need and what they're going to do with it. Normal people read the headlines and think that Silicon Valley is awash with irrationality. It isn't really true.Andrew Keen: Well, you're providing us with those headlines. One of the other pieces you linked to this week is from the FT about Silicon Valley fighting EU tech rules with backing from Trump. Most of the news this week has been about Trump outside technology. It's Trump changing the rules in terms of big tech and particularly Europe and tariffs completely.Keith Teare: Coinbase announced yesterday that the SEC has withdrawn its lawsuit against Coinbase. That's the latest little indication of the trend. There are rumors that Ripple, which was also subject to an SEC case, will have that case withdrawn. The Trump administration does not want to stand in the way of big tech or little tech for that matter, and it sees Europe, rightly so, as a bit of a backwater. The zeitgeist is changing. Even in Europe, the innovators are fairly pro the Trump message even if they're not pro Trump. The need to innovate and relax constraints.Andrew Keen: The German economy now seems to be in crisis or German culture is in crisis. But they probably left it too late. The horse or the unicorns, so to speak, has left the barn here, hasn't it?Keith Teare: Apple yesterday announced that it's turning off encryption in Europe, in the UK now, not the whole of Europe, because the UK asked for a backdoor. So now UK users of the iPhone have no security on their phones because Apple, rather than comply with a backdoor, would turn the whole security layer off. That's going to be a bit of a trend. The governments trying to control tech, especially if they're snooping on their citizens. Tech is not going to bend over and agree with them anymore. And Trump is going in the opposite direction. He's not trying to get them to do back doors.Andrew Keen: The interview of the week, my interview was with Tim Wu, who was perhaps the most influential critic of monopoly Big Tech in the Biden administration. He has an interesting new piece out on decentralizing capitalism. With the help of Claude, we came away with five points from my conversation with Wu. It's all about decentralizing capitalism, getting away from monopoly capitalism, which I think he sees in companies like Google and Facebook and even OpenAI. I know you're not a big fan of regulation, but do you think Wu has a point? He's in favor of decentralizing capitalism. He's not against the market. He's in favor of innovation.Keith Teare: What does he mean? Because you could frame that as being nation states that are too centralized or you could frame it that big tech is too centralized. How does he frame it?Andrew Keen: He frames it as capitalism lends itself to a winner take all economy. He goes over the argument that America has always been a more innovative and wealthier society when you attack the monopolies, whether it's the oil monopolies, the railroads, pharma. And the same needs to be done now to unleash creativity, to unleash guys like yourself. One of your close friends, Lina Khan, was on MSNBC this week, talking about what she calls an anti-monopoly hunger in America. I'm not sure whether that's an exaggeration, but certainly there is an anti-monopoly feeling, both on both sides of the aisle. It's one of the few things that unite Democrats and Republicans, isn't it?Keith Teare: No, I disagree. The zeitgeist is exactly the opposite. The desire to control, especially big tech is nonexistent. The Democrats live in their own bubble world on MSNBC, and they really don't know how normal people think. Most people think Google's awesome. They think Amazon is awesome. They like using AI. More and more people are using it.Andrew Keen: You can like using AI and not be in favor of monopolies. That's two different subjects.Keith Teare: Normal people don't even use the word monopoly. It's not a word in the normal lexicon. It's a purely political word, used only in the circles of the Democratic Party that have this kind of Stalinist influence. The word state monopoly capitalism came out of Stalin.Andrew Keen: But I think you need to read Wu's piece on decentralizing capitalism, because he's as much a critic of Stalinism and centralization as you. He uses models from postwar East Asia, particularly Taiwan, and of course, the Danish model to talk about reforming the US. So what would you advise guys like Wu to be arguing? Should they just throw in their chips with Donald Trump and say you're right?Keith Teare: Where I would agree with them, and this is the common thread where we can agree, is capitalism has the tendency to create what I think of as greater socialization. You get bigger and bigger units, more interconnected. The interconnected piece is super important. It's not just that they're big, they're interconnected and that tends to be global. There's a globalizing tendency within capitalism. As you globalize and you socialize production, small individual industries tend to go by the wayside. Artisan industries. All of that is true. But you don't fix that by trying to break it up. The real social good is that the human race increasingly becomes interconnected and interdependent. That's a good thing. What's wrong is the private ownership of the wealth that it produces.Andrew Keen: Last week we talked about Alva van Gogh's critique of Vance's Paris speech, although he agreed with it in part. This week, you connect with Albert's humanist vision for AI. The speech at the Paris AI summit he would have given. What is Albert's vision?Keith Teare: It's a little bit 1960s cumbayah-ish. I am one of those, so I agree with him. But it's basically saying that AI is a tool for humanity, not a tool against humanity. And he makes the case for that. He doesn't say there are no safety risks, but he minimizes safety risks and places human good first, which I think does correlate to Tim Vance. It's an opportunity to be taken, not a safety risk. So I think he's kind of on the same page as Vance, to be honest.Andrew Keen: Whenever anyone uses the word humanist, it always makes me slightly skeptical. I'm not entirely sure what it means. I mean, who's anti-humanist except for a few Marxist philosophers in Paris? Meanwhile, lots of other tech news. Microsoft announced what it sees as a breakthrough in quantum. Is that right, Keith?Keith Teare: You and I probably are not clever enough to know, but I think we are safe. The answer is yes. That headline says they've created a new state of matter, and that pertains to something called a topological qubit, which is a qubit that can be programmable. And they're so tiny and there's so many of them that a quantum computer can do calculations at much greater scale, much faster than anything before. And they claim to have reduced this new state of matter down into a chip that can be plugged into a computer, an electrical computer, not a quantum computer, and can run. And the claim is that that will accelerate quantum computing by decades, to the point where there are promising programs that mean something within five years. And so that's a new timeline from Microsoft.Andrew Keen: I think quantum is like we're going to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it, and everyone will be skeptical. Some people will say it's for real, and then suddenly something will come along, the equivalent of OpenAI or ChatGPT and quantum, and it will be real. But that certainly isn't this week. Meanwhile, your startup of the week is exactly what you've been talking about. A unicorn Saronic, which raised this week $600 million to mass produce autonomous warships. It's another example of how Silicon Valley and the Pentagon and the defense industry seem to be becoming one. Tell us about Saronic.Keith Teare: Saronic is part of that trend for Silicon Valley and military spending to converge. The same investors in Saronic are also in Anduril and some of the other companies we talked about from time to time, space as well. So it's symptomatic of two things. The first is militarized investment coming out of Silicon Valley, and the second is the valuations. I should disclose, by the way, that Signal Rank owns shares in Saronic. So this was good news for us this week.Andrew Keen: Or at least your investors own shares. It's interesting that this week Palantir also has done very well for the first few weeks of 2025. But it also crashed. This is a very frothy market, tech military startups isn't it?Keith Teare: I wouldn't say crashed. It's up like 200%. If you're an investor in Palantir and you've been holding, you wouldn't be too upset by this pullback. The world we're living in, and I'm not a fan of this by any means, but military investment by private companies selling to governments is going to be a rising trend because governments can't really innovate the military. They're so stuck with old fashioned views of what conflict might look like. It's interesting that even Musk and DOGE this week and Trump announced they're going to try to reduce the U.S. military budget by 10% annually.Andrew Keen: And they've seen some cuts. And I think when historians look back, the rise of companies like Saronic, the DOGE initiative, and the behavior which I'm like most people, I think rather critical of, of pulling back from Ukraine, they're all going to be part of the same narrative. Something is profoundly changing here on the military industrial, but the military political from the US's involvement in the world and the technological piece of this.Finally, post of the week and it comes back to the conversation you and I were just having about Tim Wu. Robert Reich, a well-known MSNBC type who was in the Clinton administration, posted that there are basically five ways to accumulate $1 billion: profiting from a monopoly, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud and inheritance. And Brad Gerstner, amongst others, was horrified with this. He said it was such a terrible, bitter and sad take on America. I'm assuming you're in the Gerstner camp, Keith.Keith Teare: I am, but that isn't why I posted it. I posted it because I wanted to focus on the absolute chasm between the democratic intellectual elite and the rest of us. Robert Reich almost is saying that you have to be a criminal to get rich. And that isn't how most people think.Andrew Keen: The American dream, right? But I, being a great fan of Reich, think he is the dinosaur of dinosaurs, but he isn't saying that. He's talking about being a billionaire. That's not being rich. So you have to distinguish.Keith Teare: This might be shocking to the listeners and maybe even to you, but it isn't that hard to become a billionaire if you do the right things these days, because 4 billion people on Earth are consuming technology outputs at increasing rates and paying for that. Being a billionaire is like what used to be being a millionaire. And it's only going up.Andrew Keen: I've got my title of this week's show Keith. "Keith Teare says it's not that hard to be a billionaire." How close are you to being a billionaire?Keith Teare: I've been very close twice in my career.Andrew Keen: No you haven't. When?Keith Teare: Absolutely have. Both RealNames and Easynet were valued at well over $1 billion.Andrew Keen: Yeah, but you didn't own the whole thing.Keith Teare: I owned a lot. And by the way, it was early in the life of the companies, and that was in 1994 and 1999. In 2025, those would be small outcomes. Today's outcomes, getting a company to be worth $1 billion happens early. That early stage unicorns point happens early.Andrew Keen: But let's be clear as well. What Reich is talking about is not billionaires. And as I said, I'm not particularly sympathetic to what he's saying either. But he's talking about real billionaires, people with $1 billion in the bank or with investors.Keith Teare: Let's just ask this question. Look back at what Reich says, and let's answer a few questions. Where would the brothers who run Stripe fit on that list? They're worth much more than $1 billion. They're not anywhere on that list. Where is Musk on that list? Where is Bezos on that list? Where are the founders of Google on that list?Andrew Keen: No, I agree with you. I think that he's wrong to say there are basically five ways to accumulate $1 billion: profiting from monopoly, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud and inheritance. You're absolutely right. But my disagreement with you is it's still incredibly hard to be a billionaire. How many billionaires are there in the US?Keith Teare: Of course it's hard.Andrew Keen: But you just said it was not that hard to be a billionaire.Keith Teare: Let me tell you what I mean by that. It's the easiest it's ever been, and it's going to get easier.Andrew Keen: Or it's easiest it's ever been because of inflation.Keith Teare: No, because of the scale of distribution networks and the revenues that come back from them. It used to be super hard. When I did Easynet, we had to put floppy disks on the front of magazines to distribute our software. When I did my most recent startups, you put an app in two app stores, and it's in the whole world the next day. And so the flow of money that comes from the ease of distribution of software to people who can pay for it if they like it, has completely changed the dynamics.Andrew Keen: I take your point. But coming back to this issue, how do you consider wealth? Who is rich? How much do you have to earn?Keith Teare: I think rich is totally subjective from your point of view. I thought I was rich when I didn't have credit card debt back in the day.Andrew Keen: Meaningless term, then. It's just entirely subjective.Keith Teare: Yes, but you can build the pyramid of wealth in terms of a smaller number of people at the top with very large amounts of wealth and go down to the bottom where lots of people have nothing. And that pyramid will change its shape and the scale at different levels through history, usually in a positive direction. That's one of the results of the socialization of production and the coming together of the human race into a single GDP growth. There's never been a period in human history recently where that pie or pyramid hasn't improved in both scale and distribution.Andrew Keen: As a bit frothy Keith, your new middle name is Keith "It's not that hard to be a billionaire" Teare. But coming back to Reich, I do agree with you. I think his approach is absurdly negative and reactionary, and the idea that you can't become a billionaire unless you're basically cheating, unless you're an inside trader or fraudulent or inherit money from someone else. He couldn't be more wrong on that, given, as you say, the Stripe guys, the Google guys, the Amazon people, even Musk. I'm no great fan of his but he didn't cheat to become a billionaire.Keith Teare: And you've got to believe, and this is why I put it in, that what he's saying is received wisdom in the minds of people like Lina Khan and Elizabeth Warren.Andrew Keen: That you're going to pick on your friend Lina Khan and Tim Wu as well. Wu teaches at Columbia. I wonder what Wu would say about that. I wonder whether Wu would argue that in a decentralized capitalism, it would be possible to be a billionaire. I'd have to get him back on the show to talk about that. Would we want a society, Keith? A decentralized capitalism where nobody was a millionaire, where the wealthiest people were worth 50 or $100 million?Keith Teare: No, I think the nightmare scenario for the future is that as production socializes and globalizes, a very small number of people control the wealth. But I think that's the right place to discuss how does the wealth get distributed to everyone? So you uplift human life, not just a few individuals, but I don't think you achieve that by trying to break up monopolies.Andrew Keen: The point is, it's not even breaking up monopolies. Reich's point is that one way to get $1 billion is to profit from monopoly. But the Google people, it's back to Peter Thiel's argument. Any entrepreneur wants to be a monopoly, that's the nature of doing startups. You want to win and winning becomes a monopoly, right? For better or worse. Google didn't start as a monopoly. Maybe it is one now because it's successful.Keith Teare: That's correct. If everyone was a failure, there'd be no monopolies. It's only success that creates market power and monopolies. It's a little bit like the word fascist. It's become a swear word to describe anything big. And fascist has become a swear word to describe anyone you disagree with. The truth is, these words mean things. Monopolies do get built. Google isn't one, in my opinion. And when they do, there's usually benefits that people are enjoying, which is why they're successful. And the key is how do you transition the world from massively concentrated private wealth to widely distributed aggregate wealth?Andrew Keen: And that's not about breaking up companies.Keith Teare: No, it's about distributing wealth, not breaking up companies.Andrew Keen: Also with Reich, there are lots of politically responsible or politically liberal billionaires. Reed Hoffman comes to mind. We talked about him last week. Finally, and this comes back to your point, Gerstner had another interesting post this week. He said the DOGE dividend could be a massive, game-changing legacy for Trump. Just one day of DOGE savings, apparently - this is what they claim, who knows whether they're really saving it - $3.7 billion could fund a private investment account with $1,000 for each child born in America. With just a little added per year, this could grow to $200,000 by age 30. Do you think Trump needs to do something radical on this front because he's not getting a great deal of good press on DOGE? A lot of people are losing their jobs every day. There are heart-rending stories of laid-off people. And it's not the billionaires losing their jobs. They're being fired by the billionaires. It's people working at poorly paid jobs in the first place. So does he need to do something with all the money he's supposed to have saved? Maybe in terms of a sovereign wealth fund or something more innovative?Keith Teare: What Gerstner is talking about there is about the distribution of wealth. It's one example of it. I think it's unlikely that Trump has the DNA to really follow through on anything like that. I don't think Donald Trump has any kind of social awareness at all about uplifting everybody. I do think there are people that do think like that. Sam Altman is one of them, and Reed Hoffman may be another, where the question of if there is abundance, how does everyone benefit from it? That's a real question. Gerstner's idea is not terrible, but I think it's a macro idea. There's a much bigger conversation needed than how to deploy the DOGE savings.Andrew Keen: I agree with you. And I think that I also agree with you on the Reich front that his kind of thinking, which is purely negative, is pointless. And what's missing on the progressive side amongst Democrats are creative, innovative thinking about the redistribution of wealth, rather than just taxing the rich or making it illegal to be a billionaire.Keith Teare: Yes.Andrew Keen: Well, we're in agreement, Keith.Keith Teare: Shocking.Andrew Keen: Shocking agreement. Although we disagree, I think it is still hard to be a billionaire. One thing I can guarantee is I've never been close and I never will be a billionaire. You say you've been close. What are the chances in the next few years, Keith, that you're going to be a billionaire from Signal Rank?Keith Teare: Don't even think about it. I think about what Signal Rank can do for everyone else. And if it does well, I'll do well.Andrew Keen: Go on bro. If it does well, I hope you'll pay me for this show. Keith Teare, publisher of That Was The Week. The man who argues that it's not that hard to be a millionaire. It's still a little hard, Keith, but we will be back next week to talk more billionaires, unicorns, AI, and everything else in the world of tech. Have a great week and we'll be back at this time next week. Thanks, Keith.Keith Teare: Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Why is reforming capitalism so essential? In the latest issue of Liberties Quarterly, Tim Wu argues that unregulated capitalism not only leads to economic monopolies, but also drives populist anger and authoritarian politics. In “The Real Road to Serfdom”, Wu advocates for "decentralized capitalism" with distributed economic power, citing examples from Scandinavia and East Asia. Drawing from his experience in the Biden administration's antitrust efforts, he emphasizes the importance of preventing industry concentration. Wu expresses concern about big tech's growing political influence and argues that challenging monopolies is critical for fostering innovation and maintaining economic progress in the United States.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our interview with Tim Wu:* Historical Parallels: Wu sees concerning parallels between our current era and the 1930s, characterized by concentrated economic power, fragile economic conditions, and the rise of populist leaders. He suggests we're in a period where leaders are moving beyond winning elections to attempting to alter constitutional frameworks.* The Monopoly-Autocracy Connection: Wu argues there's a dangerous cycle where monopolies create economic inequality, which generates populist anger, which then enables authoritarian leaders to rise to power. He cites Hugo Chavez as a pioneer of this modern autocratic model that leaders like Trump have followed.* Decentralized Capitalism: Wu advocates for an economic system with multiple centers of distributed economic power, rather than just a few giant companies accumulating wealth. He points to Denmark, Taiwan, and post-WWII East Asia as successful examples of more balanced economic structures.* Antitrust Legacy: Wu believes the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement efforts have created lasting changes in legal standards and public consciousness that won't be easily reversed. He emphasizes that challenging monopolies is crucial for maintaining innovation and preventing industry stagnation.* Big Tech and Power: Wu expresses concern about big tech companies' growing political influence, comparing it to historical examples like AT&T and IBM. He's particularly worried about AI potentially reinforcing existing power structures rather than democratizing opportunities.Complete Transcript: Tim Wu on The Real Road to SerfdomAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We live in very strange times. That's no exaggeration. Yesterday, we had Nick Bryant on the show, the author of The Forever War. He was the BBC's man in Washington, DC for a long time. In our conversation, Nick suggested that we're living in really historic times, equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, perhaps even the beginnings of the Second World War.My guest today, like Nick, is a deep thinker. Tim Wu will be very well known to you for many things, including his book, The Attention Merchants. He was involved in the Biden White House, teaches law at Columbia University, and much more. He has a new book coming out later in the year on November 4th, The Age of Extraction. He has a very interesting essay in this issue of Liberties, the quarterly magazine of ideas, called "The Real Road to Serfdom."Tim had a couple of interesting tweets in the last couple of days, one comparing the behavior of President Trump to Germany's 1933 enabling act. And when it comes to Ukraine, Tim wrote, "How does the GOP feel about their president's evident plan to forfeit the Cold War?" Tim Wu is joining us from his home in the village of Manhattan. Tim, welcome. Before we get to your excellent essay in Liberties, how would you historicize what we're living through at the moment?Tim Wu: I think the 1930s are not the wrong way to look at it. Prior to that period, you had this extraordinary concentration of economic power in a very fragile environment. A lot of countries had experienced an enormous crash and you had the rise of populist leaders, with Mussolini being the pioneer of the model. This has been going on for at least 5 or 6 years now. We're in that middle period where it's moving away from people just winning elections to trying to really alter the constitution of their country. So I think the mid-30s is probably about right.Andrew Keen: You were involved in the Biden administration. You were one of the major thinkers when it came to antitrust. Have you been surprised with what's happened since Biden left office? The speed, the radicalness of this Trump administration?Tim Wu: Yes, because I expected something more like the first Trump administration, which was more of a show with a lot of flash but poor execution. This time around, the execution is also poor but more effective. I didn't fully expect that Elon Musk would actually be a government official at this point and that he'd have this sort of vandalism project going on. The fact they won all of the houses of Congress was part of the problem and has made the effort go faster.Andrew Keen: You talk about Musk. We've done many shows on Musk's role in all this and the seeming arrival of Silicon Valley or a certain version of Silicon Valley in Washington, DC. You're familiar with both worlds, the world of big tech and Silicon Valley and Washington. Is that your historical reading that these two worlds are coming together in this second Trump administration?Tim Wu: It's very natural for economic power to start to seek political power. It follows from the basic view of monopoly as a creature that wants to defend itself, and the second observation that the most effective means of self-defense is control of government. If you follow that very simple logic, it stands to reason that the most powerful economic entities would try to gain control of government.I want to talk about the next five years. The tech industry is following the lead of Palantir and Peter Thiel, who were pioneers in thinking that instead of trying to avoid government, they should try to control it. I think that is the obvious move over the next four years.Andrew Keen: I've been reading your excellent essay in Liberties, "The Real Road to Serfdom." When did you write it? It seems particularly pertinent this week, although of course you didn't write it knowing exactly what was going to be happening with Musk and Washington DC and Trump and Ukraine.Tim Wu: I wrote it about two years ago when I got out of the White House. The themes are trying to get at eternal issues about the dangers of economic power and concentrated economic power and its unaccountability. If it made predictions that are starting to come true, I don't know if that's good or bad.Andrew Keen: "The Real Road to Serfdom" is, of course, a reference to the Hayek book "The Road to Serfdom." Did you consciously use that title with reference to Hayek, or was that a Liberties decision?Tim Wu: That was my decision. At that point, and I may still write this, I was thinking of writing a book just called "The Real Road to Serfdom." I am both fascinated and a fan of Hayek in certain ways. I think he nailed certain things exactly right but makes big errors at the same time.To his credit, Hayek was very critical of monopoly and very critical of the role of the state in reinforcing monopoly. But he had an almost naivete about what powerful, unaccountable private economic entities would do with their power. That's essentially my criticism.Andrew Keen: In 2018, you wrote a book, "The Curse of Bigness." And in a way, this is an essay against bigness, but it's written—please correct me if I'm wrong—I read it as a critique of the left, suggesting that there were times in the essay, if you're reading it blind, you could have been reading Hayek in its critique of Marx and centralization and Lenin and Stalin and the Ukrainian famines. Is the message in the book, Tim—is your audience a progressive audience? Are you saying that it's a mistake to rely on bigness, so to speak, the state as a redistributive platform?Tim Wu: Not entirely. I'm very critical of communist planned economies, and that's part of it. But it's mainly a critique of libertarian faith in private economic power or sort of the blindness to the dangers of it.My basic thesis in "The Real Road to Serfdom" is that free market economies will tend to monopolize. Once monopoly power is achieved, it tends to set off a strong desire to extract as much wealth from the rest of the economy as it can, creating something closer to a feudal-type economy with an underclass. That tends to create a huge amount of resentment and populist anger, and democracies have to respond to that anger.The libertarian answer of saying that's fine, this problem will go away, is a terrible answer. History suggests that what happens instead is if democracy doesn't do anything, the state takes over, usually on the back of a populist strongman. It could be a communist, could be fascist, could be just a random authoritarian like in South America.I guess I'd say it's a critique of both the right and the left—the right for being blind to the dangers of concentrated economic power, and the left, especially the communist left, for idolizing the takeover of vital functions by a giant state, which has a track record as bad, if not worse, than purely private power.Andrew Keen: You bring up Hugo Chavez in the essay, the now departed Venezuelan strongman. You're obviously no great fan of his, but you do seem to suggest that Chavez, like so many other authoritarians, built his popularity on the truth of people's suffering. Is that fair?Tim Wu: That is very fair. In the 90s, when Chavez first came to power through popular election, everyone was mystified and thought he was some throwback to the dictators of the 60s and 70s. But he turned out to be a pioneer of our future, of the new form of autocrat, who appealed to the unfairness of the economy post-globalization.Leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orbán, and certainly Donald Trump, are direct descendants of Hugo Chavez in their approach. They follow the same playbook, appealing to the same kind of pain and suffering, promising to act for the people as opposed to the elites, the foreigners, and the immigrants. Chavez is also a cautionary lesson. He started in a way which the population liked—he lowered gas prices, gave away money, nationalized industry. He was very popular. But then like most autocrats, he eventually turned the money to himself and destroyed his own country.Andrew Keen: Why are autocrats like Chavez and perhaps Trump so much better at capturing that anger than Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?Tim Wu: People who are outside the system like Chavez are able to tap into resentment and anger in a way which is less diluted by their direct information environment and their colleagues. Anyone who hangs around Washington, DC for a long time becomes more muted and careful. They lose credibility.That said, the fact that populist strongmen take over countries in distress suggests we need to avoid that level of economic distress in the first place and protect the middle class. Happy, contented middle-class countries don't tend to see the rise of authoritarian dictators. There isn't some Danish version of Hugo Chavez in the running right now.Andrew Keen: You bring up Denmark. Denmark always comes up in these kinds of conversations. What's admirable about your essay is you mostly don't fall into the Denmark trap of simply saying, "Why don't we all become like Denmark?" But at the same time, you acknowledge that the Danish model is attractive, suggesting we've misunderstood it or treated it superficially. What can and can't we learn from the Danish model?Tim Wu: American liberals often misunderstand the lesson of Scandinavia and other countries that have strong, prosperous middle classes like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. In Scandinavia's case, the go-to explanation is that it's just the liberals' favorite set of policies—high taxation, strong social support systems. But I think the structure of those economies is much more important.They have what Jacob Hacker calls very strong "pre-distribution." They've avoided just having a small set of monopolists who make all the money and then hopefully hand it out to other people. It goes back to their land reform in the early 19th century, where they set up a very different kind of economy with a broad distribution of productive assets.If I'm trying to promote a philosophy in this book, it's for people who are fed up with the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and think it leads to autocracy, but who are also no fans of communism or socialism. Just saying "let people pile up money and we'll tax it later" is not going to work. What you need is an economy structured with multiple centers of distributed economic power.Andrew Keen: The term that seems to summarize that in the essay is "architecture of parity." It's a bit clunky, but is that the best way to sum up your thinking?Tim Wu: I'm working on the terminology. Architecture of equality, parity, decentralized capitalism, distribution—these are all terms trying to capture it. It's more of a 19th century form of Christian or Catholic economics. People are grasping for the right word for an economic system that doesn't rely on just a few giant companies taking money from everybody and hopefully redistributing it. That model is broken and has a dangerous tendency to lead to toxicity. We need a better capitalism. An alternative title for this piece could have been "Saving Capitalism from Itself."Andrew Keen: Your name is most associated with tech and your critique of big tech. Does this get beyond big tech? Are there other sectors of the economy you're interested in fixing and reforming?Tim Wu: Absolutely. Silicon Valley is the most obvious and easiest entry point to talk about concentrated economic power. You can see the dependence on a small number of platforms that have earnings and profits far beyond what anyone imagined possible. But we're talking about an economy-wide, almost global set of problems.Some industries are worse. The meat processing industry in the United States is horrendously concentrated—it takes all the money from farmers, charges us too much for meat, and keeps it for itself. There are many industries where people are looking for something to understand or believe in that's different than socialism but different than this libertarian capitalism that ends up bankrupting people. Tech is the easiest way to talk about it, but not the be-all and end-all of my interest.Andrew Keen: Are there other examples where we're beginning to see decentralized capitalism? The essay was very strong on the critique, but I found fewer examples of decentralized capitalism in practice outside maybe Denmark in the 2020s.Tim Wu: East Asia post-World War II is a strong example of success. While no economy is purely small businesses, although Taiwan comes close, if you look at the East Asian story after World War II, one of the big features was an effort to reform land, give land to peasants, and create a landowning class to replace the feudal system. They had huge entrepreneurism, especially in Korea and Taiwan, less in Japan. This built a strong and prosperous middle and upper middle class.Japan has gone through hard times—they let their companies get too big and they stagnated. But Korea and Taiwan have gone from being third world economies to Taiwan now being wealthier per capita than Japan. The United States is another strong example, vacillating between being very big and very small. Even at its biggest, it still has a strong entrepreneurial culture and sectors with many small entities. Germany is another good example. There's no perfect version, but what I'm saying is that the model of monopolized economies and just having a few winners and hoping that anybody else can get tax payments is really a losing proposition.Andrew Keen: You were on Chris Hayes recently talking about antitrust. You're one of America's leading thinkers on antitrust and were brought into the Biden administration on the antitrust front. Is antitrust then the heart of the matter? Is this really the key to decentralizing capitalism?Tim Wu: I think it's a big tool, one of the tools of managing the economy. It works by preventing industries from merging their way into monopoly and keeps a careful eye on structure. In the same way that no one would say interest rates are the be-all and end-all of monetary policy, when we're talking about structural policy, having antitrust law actively preventing overconcentration is important.In the White House itself, we spent a lot of time trying to get other agencies to prevent their sectors, whether healthcare or transportation, from becoming overly monopolized and extractive. You can have many parts of the government involved—the antitrust agencies are key, but they're not the only solution.Andrew Keen: You wrote an interesting piece for The Atlantic about Biden's antitrust initiatives. You said the outgoing president's legacy of revived antitrust enforcement won't be easy to undo. Trump is very good at breaking things. Why is it going to be hard to undo? Lina Khan's gone—the woman who seems to unite all of Silicon Valley in their dislike of her. What did Biden do to protect antitrust legislation?Tim Wu: The legal patterns have changed and the cases are ongoing. But I think more important is a change of consciousness and ideology and change in popular support. I don't think there is great support for letting big tech do whatever they want without oversight. There are people who believe in that and some of them have influence in this administration, but there's been a real change in consciousness.I note that the Federal Trade Commission has already announced that it's going to stick with the Biden administration's merger rules, and my strong sense is the Department of Justice will do the same. There are certain things that Trump did that we stuck with in the Biden administration because they were popular—the most obvious being the turn toward China. Going back to the Bush era approach of never bothering any monopolies, I just don't think there's an appetite for it.Andrew Keen: Why is Lina Khan so unpopular in Silicon Valley?Tim Wu: It's interesting. I'm not usually one to attribute things to sexism, but the Justice Department brought more cases against big tech than she did. Jonathan Kanter, who ran antitrust at Justice, won the case against Google. His firm was trying to break up Google. They may still do it, but somehow Lina Khan became the face of it. I think because she's young and a woman—I don't know why Jonathan Kanter didn't become the symbol in the same way.Andrew Keen: You bring up the AT&T and IBM cases in the US tech narrative in the essay, suggesting that we can learn a great deal from them. What can we learn from those cases?Tim Wu: The United States from the 70s through the 2010s was an extraordinarily innovative place and did amazing things in the tech industry. An important part of that was challenging the big IBM and AT&T monopolies. AT&T was broken into eight pieces. IBM was forced to begin selling its software separately and opened up the software markets to what became a new software industry.AT&T earlier had been forced to license the transistor, which opened up the semiconductor industry and to some degree the computing industry, and had to stay out of computing. The government intervened pretty forcefully—a form of industrial policy to weaken its tech monopolies. The lesson is that we need to do the same thing right now.Some people will ask about China, but I think the United States has always done best when it constantly challenges established power and creates room for entrepreneurs to take their shot. I want very much for the new AI companies to challenge the main tech platforms and see what comes of that, as opposed to becoming a stagnant industry. Everyone says nothing can become stagnant, but the aerospace industry was pretty quick-moving in the 60s, and now you have Boeing and Airbus sitting there. It's very easy for a tech industry to stagnate, and attacking monopolists is the best way to prevent that.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Google earlier. You had an interesting op-ed in The New York Times last year about what we should do about Google. My wife is head of litigation at Google, so I'm not entirely disinterested. I also have a career as a critic of Google. If Kent Walker was here, he would acknowledge some of the things he was saying. But he would say Google still innovates—Google hasn't become Boeing. It's innovating in AI, in self-driving cars, it's shifting search. Would he be entirely wrong?Tim Wu: No, he wouldn't be entirely wrong. In the same way that IBM kept going, AT&T kept going. What you want in tech industries is a fair fight. The problem with Google isn't that they're investing in AI or trying to build self-driving cars—that's great. The problem is that they were paying over $20 billion a year to Apple for a promise not to compete in search. Through control of the browsers and many other things, they were trying to make sure they could never be dislodged.My view of the economics is monopolists need to always be a little insecure. They need to be in a position where they can be challenged. That happens—there are companies who, like AT&T in the 70s or 60s, felt they were immune. It took the government to make space. I think it's very important for there to be opportunities to challenge the big guys and try to seize the pie.Andrew Keen: I'm curious where you are on Section 230. Google won their Supreme Court case when it came to Section 230. In this sense, I'm guessing you view Google as being on the side of the good guys.Tim Wu: Section 230 is interesting. In the early days of the Internet, it was an important infant industry protection. It was an insulation that was vital to get those little companies at the time to give them an opportunity to grow and build business models, because if you're being sued by billions of people, you can't really do too much.Section 230 was originally designed to protect people like AOL, who ran user forums and had millions of people discussing—kind of like Reddit. I think as Google and companies like Facebook became active in promoting materials and became more like media companies, the case for an absolutist Section 230 became a lot weaker. The law didn't really change but the companies did.Andrew Keen: You wrote the essay "The Real Road to Serfdom" a couple of years ago. You also talked earlier about AI. There's not a lot of AI in this, but 50% of all the investment in technology over the last year was in AI, and most of that has gone into these huge platforms—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini. Is AI now the central theater, both in the Road to Serfdom and in liberating ourselves from big tech?Tim Wu: Two years ago when I was writing this, I was determined not to say anything that would look stupid about AI later. There's a lot more on what I think about AI in my new book coming in November.I see AI as a classic potential successor technology. It obviously is the most significant successor to the web and the mass Internet of 20 years ago in terms of having potential to displace things like search and change the way people do various forms of productivity. How technology plays out depends a lot on the economic structure. If you think about a technology like the cotton gin, it didn't automatically lead to broad flourishing, but reinforced plantation slavery.What I hope happens with AI is that it sets off more competition and destabilization for some of the tech platforms as opposed to reinforcing their advantage and locking them in forever. I don't know if we know what's going to happen right now. I think it's extremely important that OpenAI stays separate from the existing tech companies, because if this just becomes the same players absorbing technology, that sounds a lot like the darker chapters in US tech history.Andrew Keen: And what about the power of AI to liberate ourselves from our brain power as the next industrial revolution? When I was reading the essay, I thought it would be a very good model, both as a warning and in terms of offering potential for us to create this new architecture of parity. Because the technology in itself, in theory at least, is one of parity—one of democratizing brainpower.Tim Wu: Yes, I agree it has extraordinary potential. Things can go in two directions. The Industrial Revolution is one example where you had more of a top-down centralization of the means of production that was very bad for many people initially, though there were longer-term gains.I would hope AI would be something more like the PC revolution in the 80s and 90s, which did augment individual humanity as opposed to collective enterprise. It allowed people to do things like start their own travel agency or accounting firm with just a computer. I am interested and bullish on the potential of AI to empower smaller units, but I'm concerned it will be used to reinforce existing economic structures. The jury's out—the future will tell us. Just hoping it's going to make humanity better is not going to be the best answer.Andrew Keen: When you were writing this essay, Web3 was still in vogue then—the idea of blockchain and crypto decentralizing the economy. But I didn't see any references to Web3 and the role of technology in democratizing capitalism in terms of the architecture of corporations. Are you skeptical of the Web3 ideology?Tim Wu: The essay had its limits since I was also talking about 18th century Denmark. I have a lot more on blockchain and Web3 in the book. The challenge with crypto and Bitcoin is that it both over-promises and delivers something. I've been very interested in crypto and blockchain for a long time. The challenge it's had is constantly promising to decentralize great systems and failing, then people stealing billions of dollars and ending up in prison.It has a dubious track record, but it does have this core potential for a certain class of people to earn money. I'm always in favor of anything that is an alternative means of earning money. There are people who made money on it. I just think it's failed to execute on its promises. Blockchain in particular has failed to be a real challenge to web technologies.Andrew Keen: As you say, Hayek inspired the book and in some sense this is intellectual. The father of decentralization in ideological terms was E.F. Schumacher. I don't think you reference him, but do you think there has been much thinking since Schumacher on the value of smallness and decentralized architectures? What do people like yourself add to what Schumacher missed in his critique of bigness?Tim Wu: Schumacher is a good example. Rawls is actually under-recognized as being interested in these things. I see myself as writing in the tradition of those figures and trying to pursue a political economy that values a more balanced economy and small production.Hopefully what I add is a level of institutional experience and practicality that was missing. Rawls is slightly unfair because he's a philosopher, but his model doesn't include firms—it's just individuals. So it's all about balancing between poor people and rich people when obviously economic power is also held by corporations.I'm trying to create more flesh on the bones of the "small is beautiful" philosophy and political economy that is less starry-eyed and more realistic. I'm putting forward the point that you're not sacrificing growth and you're taking less political risk with a more balanced economy. There's an adulation of bigness in our time—exciting big companies are glamorous. But long-term prosperity does better when you have more centers, a more balanced system. I'm not an ultra-centralist suggesting we should live in mud huts, but I do think the worship of monopoly is very similar to the worship of autocracy and is dangerous.Andrew Keen: Much to discuss. Tim Wu, thank you so much. The author of "The Real Road to Serfdom," fascinating essay in this month's issue of Liberties. I know "The Age of Extraction" will be coming out on November 10th.Tim Wu: In England and US at the same time.Andrew Keen: We'll get you back on the show. Fascinating conversation, Tim. Thank you so much.Hailed as the “architect” of the Biden administration's competition and antitrust policies, Tim Wu writes and teaches about private power and related topics. First known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2002, in recent years Wu has been a leader in the revitalization of American antitrust and has taken a particular focus on the growing power of the big tech platforms. In 2021, he was appointed to serve in the White House as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy. A professor at Columbia Law School since 2006, Wu has also held posts in public service. He was enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General's Office, worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the Barack Obama administration, and worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2014, Wu was a Democratic primary candidate for lieutenant governor of New York. In his most recent book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018), he argues that corporate and industrial concentration can lead to the rise of populism, nationalism, and extremist politicians. His previous books include The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016), The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010), and Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World (2006), which he co-authored with Jack Goldsmith. Wu was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and also has written for Slate, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. He once explained the concept of net neutrality to late-night host Stephen Colbert while he rode a rollercoaster. He has been named one of America's 100 most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal; has made Politico's list of 50 most influential figures in American politics (more than once); and has been included in the Scientific American 50 of policy leadership. Wu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as a law clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

How historic are Trump 2.0's first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant, the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It's the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia as Neville Chamberlain style appeasement and notes the dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and European allies. He sees Trump's actions as revealing rather than changing America's true nature. Bryant also discusses the failures of the Dems, the role of Elon Musk in the administration, and structural changes to federal institutions. Despite all the upheaval, Bryant suggests this isn't so much "goodbye to America" as a revelation of the cynically isolationist forces that were always present in American society.Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Nick Bryant:* Historic Transformation: Bryant sees Trump's second term as a pivotal moment in world history, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, with rapid changes in global alliances and particularly in America's relationship with Russia, which he characterizes as "appeasement."* Democratic Party Crisis: He analyzes how the Democrats' failures stemmed from multiple factors - Biden's delayed exit, Kamala Harris's weak candidacy, and the lack of time to find a stronger replacement. While Trump's victory was significant, Bryant notes it wasn't a landslide.* Elon Musk's Unexpected Role: An unforeseen development Bryant didn't predict in his book was Musk's prominent position in Trump's second administration, describing it as almost a "co-presidency" following Trump's assassination attempt and Musk's subsequent endorsement of Trump.* Federal Government Transformation: Bryant observes that Trump's dismantling of federal institutions goes beyond typical Republican small-government approaches, potentially removing not just bureaucratic waste but crucial expertise and institutional knowledge.* Trump as Revealer, Not Changer: Perhaps most significantly, Bryant argues that Trump hasn't changed America but rather revealed its true nature - arguing that authoritarianism, political violence, and distrust of big government have always been present in American history. FULL TRANSCRIPT Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. About eight months ago, we had a great show with the BBC's former Washington correspondent, Nick Bryant. His latest book, "The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself," predicted much of what's happening in the United States now. When you look at the headlines this week about the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in a head-spinning way, apparently laying the groundwork for ending the Ukrainian war, all sorts of different relations and tariffs and many other things in this new regime. Nick is joining us from Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. Nick, do you miss America?Nick Bryant: I covered the first Trump administration and it felt like a 25/8 job, not just 24/7. Trump 2.0 feels even more relentless—round-the-clock news forever. We're checking our phones to see what has happened next. People who read my book wouldn't be surprised by how Donald Trump is conducting his second term. But some things weren't on my bingo card, like Trump suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza. The rapprochement with Putin, which we should look on as an act of appeasement after his aggression in Ukraine, was very easy to predict.Andrew Keen: That's quite a sharp comment, Nick—an act of appeasement equivalent to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella.Nick Bryant: It was ironic that J.D. Vance made his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Munich was where Neville Chamberlain secured the Munich Agreement, which was seen as a terrible act of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This moment feels historic—I would liken it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're seeing a complete upending of the world order.Back at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were talking about the end of history—Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis suggesting the triumph of liberal democracy. Now, we're talking about the end of America as we've known it since World War II. You get these Berlin Wall moments like Trump saying there should be a U.S. takeover of Gaza. J.D. Vance's speech in Munich ruptures the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of America's global preeminence and European security since World War II.Then you've seen what's happened in Saudi Arabia with the meeting between the Russians and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, completely resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. It's almost as if the invasions of Ukraine never happened. We're back to the situation during the Bush administration when George W. Bush famously met Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and gave him a clean bill of health. Things are moving at a hurtling pace, and it seems we're seeing the equivalent of a Berlin Wall tumbling every couple of days.Andrew Keen: That's quite dramatic for an experienced journalist like yourself to say. You don't exaggerate unnecessarily, Nick. It's astonishing. Nobody predicted this.Nick Bryant: When I first said this about three weeks ago, I had to think long and hard about whether the historical moments were equivalent. Two weeks on, I've got absolutely no doubt. We're seeing a massive change. European allies of America are now not only questioning whether the United States is a reliable ally—they're questioning whether the United States is an ally at all. Some are even raising the possibility that nations like Germany, the UK, and France will soon look upon America as an adversary.J.D. Vance's speech was very pointed, attacking European elitism and what he saw as denial of freedom of speech in Europe by governments, but not having a single word of criticism for Vladimir Putin. People are listening to the U.S. president, vice president, and others like Marco Rubio with their jaws on the ground. It's a very worrying moment for America's allies because they cannot look across the Atlantic anymore and see a president who will support them. Instead, they see an administration aligning itself with hard-right and far-right populist movements.Andrew Keen: The subtitle of your book was "America's Unending Conflict with Itself: The History Behind Trump in Advance." But America now—and I'm talking to you from San Francisco, where obviously there aren't a lot of Trump fans or J.D. Vance fans—seems in an odd, almost surreal way to be united. There were protests on Presidents Day earlier this week against Trump, calling him a tyrant. But is the thesis of your book about the forever war, America continually being divided between coastal elites and the hinterlands, Republicans and Democrats, still manifesting itself in late February 2025?Nick Bryant: Trump didn't win a landslide victory in the election. He won a significant victory, a decisive victory. It was hugely significant that he won the popular vote, which he didn't manage to do in 2016. But it wasn't a big win—he didn't win 50% of the popular vote. Sure, he won the seven battleground states, giving the sense of a massive victory, but it wasn't massive numerically.The divides in America are still there. The opposition has melted away at the moment with sporadic protests, but nothing really major. Don't be fooled into thinking America's forever wars have suddenly ended and Trump has won. The opposition will be back. The resistance will be back.I remember moments in the Obama administration when it looked like progressives had won every battle in America. I remember the day I went to South Carolina, to the funeral of the pastor killed in that terrible shooting in Charleston. Obama broke into "Amazing Grace"—it was almost for the first time in front of a black audience that he fully embraced the mantle of America's first African-American president. He flew back to Washington that night, and the White House was bathed in rainbow colors because the Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal across the country.It seemed in that moment that progressives were winning every fight. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. You assumed America's first black president would be followed by America's first female president. But what we were seeing in that summer of 2015 was actually the conservative backlash. Trump literally announced his presidential bid the day before that awful Charleston shooting. You can easily misread history at this moment. Sure, Trump looks dominant now, but don't be fooled. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in two years' time the Republicans end up losing the House of Representatives in the congressional midterm elections.Andrew Keen: When it comes to progressives, what do you make of the Democratic response, or perhaps the lack of response, to the failure of Kamala Harris? The huge amount of money, the uninspiring nature of her campaign, the fiasco over Biden—were these all accidental events or do they speak of a broader crisis on the left amongst progressives in America?Nick Bryant: They speak of both. There were really big mistakes made by the Democrats, not least Joe Biden's decision to contest the election as long as he did. It had become pretty clear by the beginning of 2024 that he wasn't in a fit state to serve four more years or take on the challenge of Donald Trump.Biden did too well at two critical junctures. During the midterm elections in 2022, many people predicted a red wave, a red tsunami. If that had happened, Biden would have faced pressure to step aside for an orderly primary process to pick a successor. But the red wave turned into a red ripple, and that persuaded Biden he was the right candidate. He focused on democracy, put democracy on the ballot, hammered the point about January 6th, and decided to run.Another critical juncture was the State of the Union address at the beginning of 2024. Biden did a good job, and I think that allayed a lot of concerns in the Democratic Party. Looking back on those two events, they really encouraged Biden to run again when he should never have done so.Remember, in 2020, he intimated that he would be a bridge to the next generation. He probably made a mistake then in picking Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate because he was basically appointing his heir. She wasn't the strongest Democrat to go up against Donald Trump—it was always going to be hard for a woman of color to win the Rust Belt. She wasn't a particularly good candidate in 2020 when she ran; she didn't even make it into 2020. She launched her campaign in Oakland, and while it looked good at the time, it became clear she was a poor candidate.Historical accidents, the wrong candidate, a suffering economy, and an America that has always been receptive to someone like Trump—all those factors played into his victory.Andrew Keen: If you were giving advice to the Democrats as they lick their wounds and begin to think about recovery and fighting the next battles, would you advise them to shift to the left or to the center?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question because you could argue it both ways. Do the Democrats need to find a populist of the left who can win back those blue-collar voters that have deserted the Democratic Party? This is a historical process that's been going on for many years. Working-class voters ditched the Democrats during the Reagan years and the Nixon years. Often race is part of that, often the bad economy is part of that—an economy that's not working for the working class who can't see a way to map out an American dream for themselves.You could argue for a left-wing populist, or you could argue that history shows the only way Democrats win the White House is by being centrist and moderate. That was true of LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—all Southerners, and that wasn't a coincidence. Southern Democrats came from the center of the party. Obama was a pragmatic, centrist candidate. Kennedy was a very pragmatic centrist who tried to bring together the warring tribes of the Democratic Party.Historically, you could argue Democrats need to move to the center and stake out that ground as Trump moves further to the right and the extremes. But what makes it harder to say for sure is that we're in a political world where a lot of the old rules don't seem to apply.Andrew Keen: We don't quite know what the new rules are or if there are any rules. You describe this moment as equivalent in historic terms to the fall of the Berlin Wall or perhaps 9/11. If we reverse that lens and look inwards, is there an equivalent historical significance? You had an interesting tweet about Doge and the attempt in some people's eyes for a kind of capture of power by Elon Musk and the replacement of the traditional state with some sort of almost Leninist state. What do you make of what's happening within the United States in domestic politics, particularly Musk's role?Nick Bryant: We've seen American presidents test the Constitution before. Nobody in the modern era has done it so flagrantly as Donald Trump, but Nixon tried to maximize presidential powers to the extent that he broke the law. Nixon would have been found guilty in a Senate trial had that impeachment process continued. Of course, he was forced to resign because a delegation of his own party drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and told him he had to go.You don't get that with the Republican Party and Donald Trump—they've fallen behind him. FDR was commonly described as an American dictator. H.L. Mencken wrote that America had a Caesar, a pharaoh. Woodrow Wilson was maximalist in his presidential powers. Abraham Lincoln was the great Constitution breaker, from trashing the First Amendment to exceeding his powers with the Emancipation Proclamation. Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional—he needed congressional approval, which he didn't have.There's a long history of presidents breaking rules and Americans being okay with that. Lincoln has never been displaced from his historical throne of grace. FDR is regarded as one of the great presidents. What sets this moment apart is that constraints on presidents traditionally came from the courts and their own political parties. We're not seeing that with Donald Trump.Andrew Keen: What about the cultural front? There's talk of Trump's revenge, taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., revenge against traditional scientists, possibly closing some universities. Is this overdramatic, or is Trump really taking revenge for what happened between 2020 and 2024 when he was out of power?Nick Bryant: Trump is in a vengeful mood—we always thought Trump 2.0 would be a project of vengeance. Republican presidents have always thought parts of the administrative state work against them, and Trump is dismantling it at warp speed. Elon Musk is going into various government departments acting like he's heading a hostile takeover of the federal government.Reagan launched a rhetorical assault on federal government, which was really a creation of the New Deal years under FDR. That period saw massive expansion of federal government into people's lives with Social Security and the welfare net. We haven't seen this kind of assault on federal government since then. Trump is also trying to dismantle what he regards as America's cultural establishment, which he sees as too white, too elitist, too intellectual. He's trying to remold America, its government, and cultural institutions in his own image.Andrew Keen: You've mentioned Reagan. I came to the U.S. like you—you came as a grad student to study American history. I came in the '80s and remember the hysteria at UC Berkeley over Reagan—that he would blow up the world, that he was clueless, a Hollywood actor with no right to be in politics. Is it conceivable that Trump could be just another version of Reagan? In spite of all this hysteria, might this second Trump regime actually be successful?Nick Bryant: You can't rule out that possibility. The mistake made about Reagan was seeing him as a warmonger when he really wanted to be a peacemaker. That was the point of ending the Cold War—he wanted to win it, but through gambles on people like Gorbachev and diplomatic moves his advisors warned against.There are analogies to Trump. I don't think he's a warmonger or wants to send U.S. troops into countries. He's described some surprising imperial ambitions like taking over Greenland, though Harry Truman once wanted that too. Trump wants to make peace, but the problem is on what terms. Peace in Ukraine, in Trump's view, means a massive win for Vladimir Putin and the sidelining of the Ukrainian people and America's European allies.There wasn't a big cost to Reagan's peacemaking—the European alliance stayed intact, he tinkered with government but didn't go after Social Security. The cost of Trump is the problem.Andrew Keen: The moral cost or the economic cost?Nick Bryant: Both. One thing that happened with Reagan was the opening of big disparities in income and wealth in American society. That was a big factor in Donald Trump's success—the paradox of how this billionaire from New York became the hero of the Rust Belt. When the gulf between executive pay and shop floor pay became massive, it was during the Reagan years.You see the potential of something similar now. Trump is supercharging an economy that looks like it will favor the tech giants and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. You end up worsening the problem you were arguably setting out to solve.You don't get landslides anymore in American politics—the last president to win 40 states was George Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan in '84 won 49 out of 50 states, almost getting a clean sweep except for Mondale's home state of Minnesota. I don't think Trump will be the kind of unifying president that Reagan was. There was a spontaneity and optimism about Reagan that you don't see with Trump.Andrew Keen: Where are the divisions? Where is the great threat to Trump coming from? There was a story this week that Steve Bannon called Elon Musk a parasitic illegal immigrant. Is it conceivable that the biggest weakness within the Trump regime will come from conflict between people like Bannon and Musk, the nationalists and the internationalist wing of the MAGA movement?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question. There doesn't seem to be much external opposition at the moment. The Democrats are knocked out or taking the eight count in boxing terms, getting back on their feet and taking as long as they can to get their gloves up. There isn't a leader in the Democratic movement who has anywhere near Trump's magnetism or personal power to take him on.Maybe the opposition comes from internal divisions and collapse of the Trump project. The relationship with Elon Musk was something I didn't anticipate in my book. After that assassination attempt, Musk endorsed Trump in a big way, put his money behind him, started offering cash prizes in Pennsylvania. Having lived at Mar-a-Lago during the transition with a cottage on the grounds and now an office in the White House—I didn't anticipate his role.Many people thought Trump wouldn't put up with somebody who overshadows him or gets more attention, but that relationship hasn't failed yet. I wonder if that speaks to something different between Trump 2.0 and 1.0. Trump's surrounded by loyalists now, but at 78 years old, I think he wanted to win the presidency more than he wanted the presidency itself. I wonder if he's happy to give more responsibility to people like Musk who he thinks will carry out his agenda.Andrew Keen: You've been described as the new Alistair Cooke. Cooke was the father of Anglo-American journalism—his Letter from America was an iconic show, the longest-running show in radio history. Cooke was always very critical of what he called the big daddy state in Washington, D.C., wasn't a fan of large government. What's your take on Trump's attack on large government in D.C.? Is there anything in it? You spent a lot of time in DC. Are these agencies full of fat and do they need to be cut?Nick Bryant: Cutting fat out of Washington budgets is one of the easy things—they're bloated, they get all these earmarks, they're full of pork. There's always been a bloated federal bureaucracy, and there's a long historical tradition of suspicion of Washington going back to the founding. That's why the federal system emerged with so much power vested in the states.Reagan's revolution was based on dismantling the New Deal government. He didn't get that far in that project, but rhetorically he shifted America's views about government. He emphasized that government was the problem, not the solution, for four decades. When Bill Clinton became president, he had to make this big ideological concession to Reaganism and deliver Reaganite lines like "the era of big government is over."The concern right now is that they're not just getting rid of fat—they're getting rid of expertise and institutional knowledge. They're removing people who may be democratic in their thinking or not on board with the Trump revolution, but who have extensive experience in making government work. In moments of national crisis, conservative ideologues tend to become operational liberals. They rely on government in disasters, pandemics, and economic crises to bail out banks and industries.Conservatives have successfully planted in many Americans' heads that government is the enemy. Hillary Clinton saw a classic sign in 2006—a protester carrying a sign saying "get your government hands off my Medicare." Well, Medicare is a government program. People need government, expertise, and people in Washington who know what they're doing. You're not just getting rid of waste—you're getting rid of institutional knowledge.Andrew Keen: One of the more colorful characters in these Trump years is RFK Jr. There was an interesting piece in the National Review about RFK Jr. forcing the left to abandon the Kennedy legacy. Is there something symbolically historical in this shift from RFK Sr. being an icon on the left to RFK Jr. being an icon on the libertarian right? Does it speak of something structural that's changed in American political culture?Nick Bryant: Yes, it does, and it speaks to how America is perceived internationally. JFK was always seen as this liberal champion, but he was an arch pragmatist, never more so than on civil rights. My doctoral thesis and first book were about tearing down that myth about Kennedy.The Kennedys did inspire international respect. The Kennedy White House seemed to be a place of rationality, refinement, and glamor. JFK embodied what was great about America—its youth, dynamism, vision. When RFK was assassinated in California, weeks after MLK's assassination, many thought that sense of America was being killed off too. These were people who inspired others internationally to enter public service. They saw America as a beacon on a hill.RFK Jr. speaks of a different, toxic American exceptionalism. People look at figures like RFK Jr. and wonder how he could possibly end up heading the American Health Department. He embodies what many people internationally reject about America, whereas JFK and RFK embodied what people loved, admired, and wanted to emulate.Andrew Keen: You do a show now on Australian television. What's the view from Australia? Are people as horrified and disturbed in Australia as they are in Europe about what you've called a historic change as profound as the fall of the Berlin Wall—or maybe rather than the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's the establishment of a new kind of Berlin Wall?Nick Bryant: One of Australia's historic diplomatic fears is abandonment. They initially looked to Britain as a security guarantor in the early days of Australian Federation when Australia became a modern country in 1901. After World War II, they realized Britain couldn't protect them, so they looked to America instead. America has underwritten Australia's security since World War II.Now many Australians realize that won't be the case anymore. Australia entered into the AUKUS deal with Britain and America for nuclear submarine technology, which has become the basis of Australia's defense. There's fear that Trump could cancel it on a whim. They're currently battling over steel and aluminum tariffs. Anthony Albanese, the center-left prime minister, got a brief diplomatic reprieve after talking with Trump last week.A country like Australia, much like Britain, France, or Germany, cannot look on Trump's America as a reliable ally right now. That's concerning in a region where China increasingly throws its weight around.Andrew Keen: Although I'm guessing some people in Australia would be encouraged by Trump's hostility towards China.Nick Bryant: Yes, that's one area where they see Trump differently than in Europe because there are so many China hawks in the Trump administration. That gives them some comfort—they don't see the situation as directly analogous to Europe. But it's still worrying. They've had presidents who've been favorable towards Australia over the years. Trump likes Australia partly because America enjoys a trade surplus with Australia and he likes Greg Norman, the golfer. But that only gives you a certain measure of security.There is concern in this part of the world, and like in Europe, people are questioning whether they share values with a president who is aligning himself with far-right parties.Andrew Keen: Finally, Nick, your penultimate book was "When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present." You had an interesting tweet where you noted that the final chapter in your current book, "The Forever War," is called "Goodbye America." But the more we talk, whether or not America remains great is arguable. If anything, this conversation is about "hello" to a new America. It's not goodbye America—if anything, America's more powerful, more dominant, shaping the world more in the 2020s than it's ever done.Nick Bryant: It's goodbye to the America we've known for the last 70 years, but not goodbye to America itself. That's one of the arguments of the book—Trump is far more representative of the true America than many international observers realize. If you look at American history through a different lens, Trump makes perfect sense.There's always been an authoritarian streak, a willingness to fall for demagogues, political violence, deep mistrust of government, and rich people making fortunes—from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the tech barons of the 21st century. It's goodbye to a certain America, but the America that Trump presides over now is an America that's always been there. Trump hasn't changed America—he's revealed it.Andrew Keen: Well, one thing we can say for sure is it's not goodbye to Nick Bryant. We'll get you back on the show. You're one of America's most perceptive and incisive observers, even if you're in Australia now. Thank you so much.Nick Bryant: Andrew, it's always a pleasure to be with you. I still love the country deeply—my fascination has always been born of great affection.Nick Bryant is the author of The Forever War: American's Unending Conflict with Itself and When America Stopped Being Great, a book that Joe Biden keeps in the Oval Office. He was formerly one of the BBC's most senior foreign correspondents, with postings in Washington DC, New York, South Asia and Australia. After covering the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he left the BBC in 2021, and now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American history from Oxford.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe